Will I ever stop growing and be perfect?

A teenager processes the need to be perfect. 

One morning, when my daughter was 16, she asked me to help her process something. She was going through a situation that pained her and was very humbling to her. This is not something most teenagers go to their parents for, so the coach in me was silently ecstatic that my teenager asked me for help.

After several minutes of dialogue, she asked, “Mom, will I ever stop growing and learning lessons? Does anyone ever become perfect?”

My response to her was one of those that you wonder where that came from! I am now convinced that it was from a Higher Being. The message was:

“Sweet girl, when you become perfect you no longer need to be on this Earth, as it doesn’t have anything else to teach you. Your work here will be done and it’s time to go.  Hopefully you will have reached a point in your life where your legacy will leave behind many lessons and teachings for others to learn from.  We should all aspire to leave this world a better place than it was when we got here.”

She responded with a tilt of her head and a paused. She took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

I knew in that moment, it was not what she wanted to hear.  I’ve never have purposefully sugarcoated the fact that life will often humble us and bring us to our knees.  There will be heart wrenching moments that break us yet teach us so much. The polarity of what we perceive as painful and fulfilling moments, is what allows us to savor this life to the fullest.  In truth, life is schooling, and we will never be perfect.  My hope is that the message I gave my daughter that day allowed her to embrace the lessons that this life wants to teach her, and that she makes a conscious choice to show up fully and embraces those lessons.