High Jump

I was checking out a mates Facebook site and I can across something I really like.
It was a video showing a kid cleaning a car as his dad had asked him to.  In the background were his mates playing hockey.  He really wanted to join them, and his father had said he could after he had cleaned the car.
The kid hurried through the task and then reported to his dad he had finished.  His dad took a look and it was obvious there were things still needing doing.  The father then asked the question that was the moral of the story.  In the intro a guy said it had affected the rest of his life.
His dad asked, “are you proud of it?”  The kid was honest enough with himself to declare there was a bit more he could do and did it.  He then went off to play hockey with the neighbours. (I used to play hockey, but there would be a whole other story in that).
There are a couple of things I like about that and one of them is the expectations were not unrealistic.  I have been particularly good at setting unrealistic expectations of myself.  I used to have a book with columns that listed things I wanted to do and things I wanted to avoid.  A win got a tick.  A loss was marked with a cross.
I gave that away.  It just depressed me.  There was nothing wrong with the list, but it seemed the harder I tried the more I failed.  In the end I just surrendered it all to God both good and bad.  I knew I needed help with the bad stuff but declared, “not my problem.”  If He did not do it, it would not be done.  Funny thing was stuff was brought up at a particular time and we dealt with it together.
I learned what I consider a valuable lesson from that.  It was not that some stuff does not matter – it does.  But I don’t have to be perfect to be acceptable, but I do need to be willing.  There is a time and place for everything, but trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps only leads to me toppling.  
I guess that is tied in with the other thing that came home really strongly to me in the video.  “Are you proud of it?”  All I can do is the best I can do.  It may not be my problem but nor is it anyone else’s.  The bar is set higher for me than anyone else’s expectations anyway.
I may need to learn but if I am willing I will.  No matter where I am on the road, I want the answer to “are you proud of it?” to be a resounding yes.