Perhaps you will think that I have lost my ever-loving mind when I tell you that I tend to believe that I will be more connected to other people if I can demonstrate my perfection. My fashionable clothes, my picture-ready hair, my sculpted body, my fancy home and car, my carefully practiced music, etc. I am convinced that people will especially want to be my friend when they hear my flawlessly reasoned arguments – about how I am right and wise and everybody else is wrong and short-sighted. My life and I in it are the absolute pink of perfection – don’t you want to be around me and be my friend? (I can already sense your sympathy for my husband!)

It must be some kind of insanity that moves me to such thoughts, because nobody is looking for a friend who outshines them at all times and in all ways. I remember looking at one of my friends in junior high and wondering why he was so popular when he never combed his hair. Please keep in mind that this was in the 80’s when nobody left home without big hair-do’s requiring every hair to be meticulously arranged and held in place with clouds of ozone-depleting hairspray! I think that this was the beginning of an epiphany for me.

You may know or remember Daniel Barnes who ran our sound prior to Adam Gilbert. Daniel is now in college, and one of his professors gave him an assignment to get the answers to a series of questions without looking them up online and without other people looking up the answers for him. So he asked his friends for help. Before long, he had long-lost relatives knocking on doors of previously unknown neighbors in order to find answers to bizarre, obscure questions for Daniel’s professor. He got the answers he needed, but more importantly, he got an answer that he wasn’t seeking. He may have believed that knowing things is powerful, but what he learned is that not knowing things is also powerful. It led to new friendships and stronger bonds. I’ve never met this professor, but I think I want to sit at her/his feet and learn.

Then there are those moments when we watch a performer, and they forget the words to their song, or an athlete who falls, or an actor whose prop fails. Suddenly everybody is pulling for them and feeling empathy for them. Nobody wants to screw up in front of other people, but sometimes those moments are the ones we remember the best and that teach us the most.

So here is the big reveal. I have come to suspect that we don’t connect when we compete for flawless perfection. In fact, sometimes I think it is exactly this drive for perfection that separates us. We connect over our shortcomings, weaknesses, and brokenness. We bond through our authenticity and vulnerability. The most ego-driven people are not usually the most lovable, but rather, the ones who can admit that they were wrong. Why is connection important? Because I believe that when we connect with people in deep and meaningful ways, we come to love them. When we love people, we are more likely to treat them as Jesus taught us. Maybe for Lent I will try giving up some ego?