When I left the evangelical part of my religious life I left many parts of myself behind me. I don’t know if this is one of those parts or if it just is an unavoidable part that just comes when you grow up no matter where you do it.

The part I am think of is appreciating people for who they are and not for what they represent. When I was The Good Christian Girl that was all I seemed to appreciate for but more frustratingly it was the different roles people around me succeeded to live up to I appreciated them for. I judged people according to how well I thought they lived up to the role I thought were they primary role in their life. It was very important to me that my partner was the perfect partner, my parents was critically reviewed based on my image of A Parent and how they lived up to that and so on for friends, colleagues, pastors and basically everyone I ever met.

When I stepped away from the environment where I fitted in to a scary place where I was the most unusual person everyone had ever met and didn’t fit any template for how someone should be I could finally step away from my bad habit of only judge people in that way and start appreciate people for just being nice people. In some ways I never got to know my partner, my parents, friends and others until way after I came out. I was mainly interested in such a small part of them.

I just spoke to my parents for a rather long while. I feel so good and re-energized when speak to them nowadays. When I try to get to know them and appreciate them for who they are as persons. They are very nice and likable persons in a way that I didn’t recognize when I compared them only to my model of perfect parents. But honestly? Who want’s anyone to be perfect? The only thing I think a perfect person around me would give me is angst over my imperfect sides. Being an imperfect child to two perfect parents would be exhausting. I very much prefer to be myself along with two nice people that I share both good and bad sides with.

I don’t know if I needed to get away from church to grow to this place but I am very pleased to be here.

Today I yelled to my middle daughter over having Lego on her floor. A perfectly reasonable thing for a six year old to have and I was tired after a week with migraines.

I remembered my father yell with almost the same words to me over Lego parts when I was 6 years and the old me would be freaked out of being an imperfect parent and having a daughter that I haven’t brought up perfectly. This more energy-effective environmentally safe me just feel a very strong bond towards both my daughter for being messy in the same way as me and to my dad for getting annoyed for the same semi-resonable minor things. Old me: Dissapointed, feeling desperately immutable and alone. New me: A part of something big, content with just getting to know people no matter how well or badly I perform.

So I smiled, helped my daugther to figure out a way to store her Lego that fits her way to play with it better than her previous way and then I called my father and chatted for a while.

I bet there are very few people missing old me anymore. If they do they just didn’t know her as well as I did.

Now I am off to sleep and hopefully I will yell less tomorrow. And write less self-absorbed blog post and clean this messy apartment up more.