Perfect

I've grown to hate the word perfect. Since the day Hunter was born, the word perfect made me cringe. People all around me were having babies, and each.and.every.one. of them was just.so.perfect. Except for mine. Mine wasn't perfect, at least not in the formal definition: "having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be."
As little as my mind was during my mid-twenties, it took almost a handful of years to be able to accept the word perfect back into my vocabulary. Even a year and a half ago, when Harrison was born, I never ever ever used the word perfect. My thinking was that I didn't want to offend anyone who had a baby with a disability who wasn't able to describe their tiny miracle with an adjective like 'perfect'. Not that people were offending me by using the word, I was quietly taking offense against myself (if that even makes sense) when other people described their babies as perfect.

But if you look carefully at the definition of perfect, the last leg of it states "as good as it is possible to be", and that's the part that I wasn't looking into enough.
Hunter was born a healthy baby with all of his limbs, that's as good as possible. All we had really hoped for. But in my tiny little head, he still just wasn't fit for the word perfect.

What a shame for me to feel that way about my son. Why couldn't I ever call him perfect to my family and friends? Because he was perfect to us. He was perfectly born to the perfect family to fit HIS perfectly planned out needs.
Blair and I aren't perfect. We are very far from it. But we are perfect for each other, and we are perfect for Hunter. And by perfect, I mean perfectly learning from our everyday mistakes, perfectly trying to improve ourselves, our habits, our daily lives and perfectly loving our kids to the best of our ability.

Every day I go around noticing imperfections about myself. My hair, my body, my diet, my attitude, my work, my memory, my love for God, my organization (or lack thereof). And then one day, I saw Hunter taking pictures with my phone, and I heard him whisper, "Oh no, that one is not perfect" and I stopped in my tracks. I had no idea where he had heard the word perfect (except for maybe if he was inside my head) and I wasn't even sure he knew what it meant. But I decided from that day forward that I needed to give the word perfect another chance by giving it another meaning. And that new meaning for me is being perfectly created in the image and likeness of God. Because in God's eyes, we are all perfect. Flaws, wrinkles, weaknesses and all. We were created uniquely perfect, and that's good enough for Him.

I don't want my kids to grow up comparing themselves to the rest of the world and thinking that everything they say and do and see has to be perfect. I just want them to know that they were born that way. And when I look at Hunter's baby pictures, I know he was perfect, even though I wasn't willing to admit it. I know he was created perfectly by God and placed into the family that could perfectly give him what he needed (with our imperfections as well.)

So welcome back to my vocabulary, perfect. You are beautiful and allowable in my world again.

Ps. I haven't gotten that perfect family of 4 shot lately because half the time my 4 year old is hoarding my phone or my 1 year old has "hidden" it somewhere, so here are a few others (photobomber included)