I once read a book called My Irregular Person. This was written by a very kind and loving woman who helped many people in her life. She was a famous writer and speaker and people would pay thousands of dollars for her to address a group because she always had such good advice that benefited so many. What hardly anyone knew, was that her personal life was in turmoil. Not because of anything she had done, but because since she was a little child she had never been able to please her father, and though now she was an adult with children of her own, she still felt his disapproval in everything she did. Thousands loved her, but that one voice kept her from ever feeling worth anything.
Well, what she eventually learned, and I hope you can learn faster than she did, is that all of us have irregular people in our life. They are irregular like a piece of clothing that wasn't quite woven right, has a misprint on it, or something else that makes it imperfect itself. But because they are in our life we try to put them on, and they look like they ought to fit, we admire them, we want to include them, but they don't quite fit right. There is just something irregular about them. But because we love them, or seek to please them, or for whatever reason it is that they are in our life, even though they are the ones that are a little off, they tend to make us feel like there is something wrong with us.
Sometimes our need for their approval is so great we say and do things that are even personally destructive: "Gee, Mom, you knitted me a three-armed sweater. Now I feel bad that I only have two." That sounds ridiculous, but that is just how crazy some of the games these irregular people play with us, to the point that we feel that there is something wrong with us if we can't please them. Sometimes we just have to realize that we can't please them, quit trying, and just do the best we can to do what we know is right and let them deal with the rest of it themselves. Try as I might, I will never grow that third arm. My mom might be unhappy that I never wear the sweater she made me, but the reality is that if she sees me as imperfect because of it, that is her choice, not mine. I can choose to see myself however I desire to see myself, and that is my choice, not hers.
