This week I was re-filling my flour jar, and I found a bag of wholemeal flour at the back of my cupboard. It’s bag which I drove across town to get from a friend last March when flour was really hard to get hold of! Was it just me that got flour crazy? Anyway, because it’s brown flour, it has sat in my cupboard for 14 months, because my children don’t like things I make with it.
Today I decided to have a go at mixing it in with some white, three scoops of white to one scoop of brown. As I was doing this, I thought,
“Why am I doing this? Will I gradually increase the ratio until they’re ok with brown? Is 25% brown flour really worth doing this for?”
Then I caught myself being a perfectionist – obviously I’d love for my children to have some natural roughage in their diet, but that will probably happen at some point as they head into their adult lives and it won’t be an issue for them.
However, giving them 25% wholemeal flour is definitely better for them than 0% so instead of aiming for perfection, I’m aiming for something more do-able now in the season we’re in.
It reminded me of when I made my first sticker book, Our Family GodVenture. I gave it to a friend to try out for me and give me feedback.
She was a Mum to 4 children under 10, and she said it was really hard, if not impossible, to gather all four of them to do a family devotion time. However, she found it worked when she started with what she called ‘one willing soul’ and let others join as they wanted to.
I know some families have a family devotion time every day or once a week, and that’s fab, but for others, like my friend, it’s not quite right for their family at least in this season, so this attitude of starting where we are is really important.
We can have really amazing dreams for our family faith times, but really it’s our goals we should keep in mind, and be flexible about how we get there.
Knowing what will work for your family is also a journey, as it changes in different seasons of life. All we can do is try something, not waiting for perfection but just giving it a go. If it works, that’s great. If not, we can adapt it or try something else.
What might you be avoiding doing because you’re waiting for perfection?