Fish Sauce and Star Trek (Spoiler Alert)

I use a frequent saying "If you think somebody is perfect, you haven't hung out with them long enough."  Well, if you have hung out with me long enough, you will know that I have a perfection problem.  I hate that I am not perfect. I hate that I make mistakes and I stress out when things are not exactly the way that I want them to be.  

I hide it pretty well, but truly, if you hang out with me long enough, you will see it.  One of the problems with that is that I try to perfect my children too.  As a therapist, I know how profoundly dangerous it is to perfect on our children.  As Brene Brown said, children were wired to struggle - what they need is someone to tell them that they are worth it... not that they are not good enough.

I have written about that before... watching my son play T-ball and getting all wound up when he didn't stand in the right place, do what the coach said, pay attention, etc.  It is something that I have been working on letting go for awhile.

This past weekend, I was at a men's retreat.  It was my night to help with dinner and we were having Hmong Egg Rolls and Coconut Lemon Ginger Chicken Soup. I had requested the ingredients to be purchased before I arrived and had full confidence that they would be there.  However, when I started to look through the purchased items, one glaring item was missing.  The fish sauce.

Fish sauce is basically anchovy juice, water and salt. Not the most appealing sauce for sure, but it is wonderful and absolutely essential in many South-East Asian Dishes.  I looked through the cupboards frantically, but could not find it. I asked one of the leaders if fish sauce had been purchased.  The answer was unclear. And I needed it.  Without it, the soup would not be... well.... perfect.

And so I drove an hour down the mountain to find an Asian store that was located another 30 minutes away (It was the only one that was showing up on my navigation device) and then another hour back up the mountain.  The whole time I was feeling the anger building and building and building inside!  I was yelling at no-one in particular saying, "See!  See! If you want something right, you have to do it yourself!  I can't believe that I am driving down the mountain because of fish sauce!"

But then the therapist inside of me said, "Oh goodie, Troy!  This is just the opportunity that you need to help you deal with your perfection issue.  I told the therapist part of me to shut up.

When I arrived back up at the cabin, I started to make dinner.  I had to breathe deeply several times in order to calm myself.  Then I started into the recipe for the soup.  It called for ginger and garlic for the springrolls.  I started looking all over for the garlic and the ginger.  They were missing too.  NO GINGER AND GARLIC!  UGH!  I was so mad that I hadn't seen they were missing before I drove two hours to get fish sauce. 

Another guy offered to go to a near by small gas station/ market to see if they had ginger or garlic, but didn't have a car and the likelihood of them actually having ginger and garlic was zilch!  So I had to make the soup without the ginger and the egg rolls without garlic.

I had a hard time accepting that there wouldn't be garlic or ginger.  I keep looking in the cupboard hoping that in some miracle I would find some.  In one of my repeated searches, I moved a bottle of something and there hiding in the corner was a small bottle of fish sauce.  "You have got to be kidding me!"  I said to myself.  I felt like the lesson was just getting richer.  I couldn't help but laugh at my own insanity.

The soup and the egg rolls were delicious even without the garlic or the ginger. As I sat with that experience, I felt that God had set it up that way because He needed me to learn a valuable lesson about perfection, anger, and letting things go. The experience was made just for me.  I realized how ridiculous it was that I drove 2.5 hours for a small bottle of fish sauce that we didn't even need.

Now you may be wondering what in the world this has to do with Star Trek.  In the latest Star Trek movie,  Into Darkness, Captain Kirk and his crew have to fight a formidable foe.  One who is one a search for perfection.  

His wrath is unleashed when that quest is interrupted by a bunch of flawed humans who inadvertently made a mistake.  Khan, genetically engineered to be superior to humans in every way is forced by another man to create a warship to control the galaxy.  Both Khan and Admiral Alexander Marcus had their own ideas about the way things were supposed to be.  When things didn't go their way, they went out of their way to force it leaving devastation in their wake. 

I don't want to do that any more. I see how perfectionism hurts instead of helps.  I don't want to have any more fish sauce moments. But I probably will.  Change does not happen over night.

Nephi, in the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ, wrote:  Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord... nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that am!  Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do easily beset me." (2 Nephi 4:17-18).

Nephi was frustrated with himself.  Maybe he had been working on some things and they didn't work out the way that he had hoped.  His father had just died.His brothers were being rebellious. He was called upon to lead his family.  He was overwhelmed. He wasn't perfect and it was showing.

But Nephi did something that I did not do.  He didn't drive two hours out of his way to fix it. This is what he writes, "Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.  My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions. " Instead of trying to fix it by himself, he turned to God, as he had done numerous times before and said, "I can't do this... will you Help me."

As I realized this during my retreat, I realized that I don't have to carry the burden of perfection anymore and I don't have to try to perfect my children either.  I can turn to God and let His light remind me that most things that I stress out about (money, meals, etc) are really as minor as fish sauce.  In the eternal scheme of things, most of the things that I worry about don't really matter.

I can continue to stress out about it and watch the devastation happen in my family, not unlike the wrath of Kahn, or I can turn to the Lord and say, "It's only fish sauce and let it go."