Present Over Perfect

Some of what I’m leaving behind in this season is the
need to please everyone. I want to respect all people. I want
to learn from all people, most especially people who are
different from me and who disagree with me, but pleasing,
for me, is over.
Pleasing is such a fraught and freighted word, it seems,
saccharine and over-sweet. Let’s do so much more than
simply please people. Let’s see them and love them and
delight them, look deeply into their eyes. Pleasing is a
shallow and temporary joy, not nearly as valuable or rich as
seeing or connecting or listening. Pleasing feels like corn
syrup, like cheap candy, while pleasure is homemade pie,
rich with butter, thick with sugar and ripe fruit.
For years, I have bridged that gap between differing
opinions, tempered my own, made sure that everyone in the
room was happy and fed and taken care of. It began as a
clean love for hospitality, but over the years, I think, it
devolved into care-taking and people-pleasing at the
expense of my own self, at the expense of telling the truth
about what I think and what I need and what matters most to
me.
These days I want to love deeply and well, and that’s
really different from pleasing. Love is often quieter, and it’s
never connected to that anxious proving and tap-dancing
that so many of us have learned to keep people happy.
After a lifetime of believing that the voices that mattered
were Out There, approving or disapproving of me, I’m
learning to trust the voice within, the voice of God’s Spirit,