Choose Life

Choose Life
Oil on Canvas 24x18
 

Perfectionist. I had heard the term many times, often finishing the sentence "You must be a ...".
I would bow my head slightly and nod, hoping to appear humble but all the while pride was
swelling in my heart that someone, once again, had noticed my flawless work.

The term "highly sensitive person" however, I had not heard until the fifth decade of my life
when a friend suggested I probably was one. She knew of a book that might help me. When I
read the opening pages, I began to weep. I had never understood that some people are created
to be highly sensitive. I always assumed there was something wrong with me, a character flaw
most likely. I couldn't tolerate light and noise and sadness and insect bites and motion like
other people around me. As a child I got carsick on every trip until my parents figured out that I
needed to sit in the front seat as a preventative measure. My sisters thought this was quite
unfair, but they didn't like me throwing up in the backseat either, so it worked out best for
everybody. Once, while camping, a horsefly bit me on my upper lip. It swelled so much that it
hung over my lower lip and touched my nose at the same time. I got rashes from playing in
cedar trees and from too much sunshine. My entire leg became swollen from a bee sting on my
thigh.
 

But it wasn't just physical sensitivity, I was also emotionally sensitive. When I was eight, a baby
pheasant I was caring for died. I had only had it for a few hours, and what could an 8-year-old
possibly know about caring for an orphan baby pheasant. But I cried until I could barely
breathe, wanting so badly for it to live. In high school I was the only student sobbing the day
the unpopular boy, for fear of being shamed, asphyxiated on his own vomit while rushing up
the stairs after lunch. Seeing my tears, a teacher kindly asked if I knew the student well.
Actually, I didn't know him at all, but wasn't this a horrible tragedy? Why wasn't everyone
sobbing, especially those who had teased and taunted him?

I have never liked being in crowded places. When the pandemic hit, I found the restrictions
suited me quite well. I was perfectly OK watching a church service on my computer, having
doctor appointments via video, or purchasing things online and having them delivered to my
front door. No get-togethers, no parties, no social events meant I didn't have to deal with the
exhaustion of interacting with a lot of people. The chaos of life was contained.
 

Two decades earlier I had allowed myself to risk the comforts of home and ventured to a far
away place. My husband and I took our two young-adult children to Europe. Three weeks, one
backpack each. We visited relatives on the island of Corsica, pen pals in France and Italy, a
friend in Germany, then on to Prague where our daughter attended an international harp
conference. While she participated in workshops and listened to lectures and my son found
places to skateboard, my husband and I wandered the city. I loved the old cemeteries filled with
beautiful statues. The figure at the tomb of Louisa Beaufortova, (1865-1928) captivated me, her
face mournful, serene, otherworldly. When we returned home from Europe I started a painting
of her statue. She is standing on a pedestal, and for reasons unknown to me at the time, I
wanted to show her stone body turning to flesh. The painting took 2 years to complete, that's
how long it took for me to understand what this work was really about--Perfectionism.
 

My mom is 93 and she can still recount the story of her grandma Rose and the beautiful red
dress she wore on one of her rare visits. My mom, a young child, rushed to hug her grandma
and wanted to feel the cloth of her pretty skirt only to be told "Get your filthy hands off me."
 

I am 68 and I can recall the extreme childhood discomfort of having dirt removed from under
my fingernails by my mother with a pointy metal manicure tool. And then there were the daily
admonishments-- "Wash your hands." "Brush your hair, and don't forget the back." "B+ on a
report card, hmmmm, I think you can do better." "You need to practice your piano. I know the
neighborhood kids are outside playing. But you are better than they are. They don't play a
musical instrument."

I would tell myself -Your cousins are in a lower class because they didn't graduate from college,
they didn't even attend college. You however, you graduated summa cum laude, even if you did
have to ask one of your professors to raise your final grade by a half a point. (Magna cum laude
just wasn't good enough.)
 

Be vigilant. Keep away from things you are not good at. Win the game, the contest, the
scholarship. Don't wear navy blue with black. Don't wear clothes that look worn out. Brush and
floss after every meal and after snacks as needed. Keep your weight under a certain number,
which is usually a number less than what you saw on the scale that morning. Keep your voice
down. Don't draw attention to yourself. Be careful not to break things. Mispronouncing or
misspelling a word is a sign of low intelligence and a lack of education. Don't tempt men with
your beauty and femininity.

And on it went--Nothing less than being at the top was OK. Perform perfectly. Piano recitals,
concerts, accompanying congregations and choirs, playing for instrumentalists at contest,
accompanying musical theater classes. But never, never, were the performances perfect. (oh
yeah, human being). Always a sense of failure. Next performance steeped with anxiety, brain
and body hijacked by fear. Hands shaking. Leg shaking, can barely hold down the damper pedal.
Less than, far less than, a perfect performance.

Is it any wonder I pick on my hangnails? That I take medication for anxiety because I have
exhausted my resources to deal with everyday stress?

Though looking and acting perfect is hard work, and I never measured up to my own standards,
I kept trying, hoping that working harder and smarter or being more disciplined would
eventually pay off. I was in bondage to constant self-rejection, judging and finding myself
wanting. Since I have always avoided things I couldn't do well, the thought of living as a statue
was attractive. If you are made from marble your skin is perfectly smooth, you are firm and
shapely, you don't gain weight. If you are a statue you don’t speak, so you cannot
mispronounce a word or reveal your ignorance. Stone cannot act, therefore can never break
anything or hurt anyone. A statue does not move so will never trip and fall or get lost driving. A
marble woman never blushes, so she will never be embarrassed that she is embarrassed. It is all
very safe. But you live on a pedestal.

In Exodus 3: 7-8 God said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I’ve heard
them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I
have come down to rescue them… and to bring them up out of that land into a good and
spacious land.” Then in Exodus 13:14,16 “With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt,
out of the land of slavery. And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead
that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand.”

I didn't need Egyptians to enslave me, I was the slave driver, suffering at my own hand. I could
hardly imagine a good and spacious land. And so, I realized, it was time to loosen my grip on
perfectionism. I began to acknowledge this by altering the painting of Louisa. It had set,
unfinished, in my studio for more than a year. But now I realized what I needed to do to
complete the work. Previously, I had changed part of Louisa's figure from white stone into rosy
flesh, now I added green to her clothing. I painted a thin crown of green laurel leaves on her
head as a symbol of life and victory.

Finally, I inscribed her forehead with a reminder of her journey from death to life. I chose a
fragment from Deuteronomy 30:19 “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Therefore choose life.” In a very small font with gold ink I wrote “choose life” on her forehead.
But I wrote it backwards so that when she looks in the mirror she can read it.

Life means growth and growth is messy. Shedding skin, shedding ideas. Allowing newness to
emerge.

He has set before us life and death

therefore

Choose Life.