I knew it was the perfect storm, but I didn’t know how to stop it. Our little girls were getting tired of mama being gone so long, but I couldn’t get myself to turn off the vacuum.
…all for the sake of excellence.
It was on a Tuesday several years ago, when we’d come home from Bible Study and all I could think about was getting the vacuuming done. The girls wanted to play, but I couldn’t stop vacuuming until every last dog hair and bit of dirt was gone. The hum of the vacuum was so constant that it started driving the girls crazy. Whining ensued: Where was mommy and why wasn’t she playing?
That’s when I knew excellence was an enemy of mine.
Excellence becomes the enemy when we turn our focus to task and performance and away from people.
This is something all of us can relate to, whether it’s leading the best small group, staging an amazing event, hosting a fabulous dinner, or facilitating an efficient meeting. Excellence becomes the enemy when we shrug off, ignore, act unkindly, speak carelessly, or needlessly upset people so that a task can be completed to our liking. We must always put people first.
In our striving for excellence, we misapply Scripture, like “doing it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31) or “work as if you’re working for God not for man” (Colossians 3:23, Ephesians 6:7) in order to justify our obsessive-compulsive, perfectionist tendencies.
But lately, I’ve been looking at excellence in a whole new way.
In my excellently-vacuumed days, excellence was synonymous with perfection, control, and pride, which led to burnout, exhaustion, and obsession… and two uncooperative toddlers. My mindset started to change after I fell in love with Holley Gerth’s definition instead: “Excellence is doing what you can, with what you have, where you are, as you are.”
Excellence doesn’t have to be error-free. It can look like Spaghetti-O’s for dinner after a night up with a sick kid or a report that’s been written, not to perfection, but with the time and information available. It can look like investing in a friendship for five minutes in carpool line.
Excellence doesn’t have to be the enemy when we follow the way of Jesus.
My way is to seek control. When I feel overwhelmed, I revert back to what I know: find a goal (in this case, vacuuming) and complete it. Stay-at-home parenting was foreign to me, and my fear of doing it “incorrectly” led me to avoid it altogether…so I focused on something that seemed far more familiar, goal accomplishment.
Excellence becomes the enemy when I try to control and manipulate my situations and surroundings, but the way of Jesus is to relinquish control.
After trying to outrun God, survive a storm, and live in the belly of a big fish, Jonah said to God, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and You listened to my cry.” (Jonah 2:1) When excellence becomes the enemy, let’s do as Jonah did and take our feelings of overwhelm, hurt, despair, and frustration to God—He hears and answers us.
My way is to be prideful about the work that I’ve done. Let’s be honest, one of the main reasons we want things to be excellent is so that we get the credit and compliments. We’re far more interested in getting recognized than pursuing excellence for the sake of others.
Excellence becomes the enemy when we’re too interested in our glorification, but the way of Jesus is to boast in weakness.
Paul said that if we are to boast, we should boast about Christ crucified. (Galatians 6:14). Let’s boast in our weaknesses so God gets the glory. Let’s boast in what God’s doing, not in our accomplishments. As we work, serve, lead, and parent with excellence, let’s point people to Jesus and not ourselves.
My way is to embrace perfectionism. I remember vacuuming and hearing whimpering toddlers and telling myself, Well, you know you’re doing this for Jesus, or God says to do things with excellence, and that’s what you’re doing…Suck it up. But I wasn’t serving and caring for myself or for our girls with excellence. I was misapplying Scripture and flogging my little heart.
Excellence becomes the enemy when we pretend we’re striving for the right reasons, but the way of Jesus always puts people first.
Let’s remember that God cares about tasks because tasks are the vehicle He uses to refine and transform us into who He designed us to be. When we work, serve, lead, and parent in a God-glorifying way, we always, always point people back to Jesus. How we do our tasks forms our character, and our character is designed to reflect the nature of God: people first.
A God-glorifying life uses its God-given talents, resources, and capacity to show love to Him and to others, and to complete the work that it’s uniquely designed and created to do. My obsessive-compulsive need to vacuum in various directions was not about pointing my girls back to Jesus. Instead, it was about my preferences and extreme thinking—it was my sinful nature on full display.
My house is no longer vacuumed excellently, or, at least, not in the way that I used to define “excellent.” But according to my new definition, it’s exactly as it should be because I’m doing what I can, with what I have, where I am, as I am. And our girls (and their mama) like this kind of excellence so much better.
