I was dreaming and talking in my sleep but the sound of my voice woke me up. So here I am at dark-thirty on the morning of my birthday just thinking, just praying, just hoping, that I can organize the processes of my heart and mind into something that makes sense.

Over the past several days for whatever reason I’ve heard people in difficult circumstances say in reference to their problem “In a perfect world I wouldn’t be experiencing this.” For the past three months one of my daughters was separated from her new husband while he was away at a place in South Carolina that advertises “We Make Marines.” My daughter struggled and she suffered. Sometimes she did well and sometimes she did poorly. My son-in-law lived through the rigors and stress of that special brand of hardship one only finds in boot camp of the United States Marine Corps. In the middle of the struggle, “In a perfect world,” my daughter said to my wife and I, “my husband and I would be upstairs sleeping together every night.” My perfect world would certainly have that for her but I would hope that they would be upstairs in their own house and not mine. I wonder if my daughter has ever thought that in a perfect world government trained killers would not be necessary whether they be soldiers, sailors, air men, or marines.

At work the phrase “In a perfect world…” is usually the opening line of some complaint about the workplace or someone there in a position of authority. Someone told me recently at an obscenely early time in the morning, “In a perfect world you would be at home warm in your bed and I would be front and center at a strip club with one hundred one dollar bills.” In a perfect world I’m sure that a strip club would not be a concept.

Yesterday my wife was doing a minor project in the kitchen and she said it. “In a perfect world I should be able to assemble and attach these pieces of wood together without driving a nail through my countertop or my finger.” I haven’t decided if women using a pneumatic nail gun or other power tools would be part of my perfect world. As it happened this time my sweetheart did put a three quarter inch brad into her thumb.

We live in a world that is not as it should be. It is what it is. Bill Murray said in the movie St. Vincent, “It is what it is….do you know what that means? It means I am screwed and I will forever remain screwed.” We live in the world as it is. There is evil, pain, darkness, and suffering. We live in a place where it is necessary to protect ourselves as a country with vastly destructive weaponry. My son spent some years in the belly of a nuclear powered weapon called the USS Enterprise. He did so with the sons and daughters of 5,000 other moms and dads. He came home safely and when he did my world was perfect. My oldest daughter lives and works in a place in Central America where crime, corruption, and poverty are the normal circumstances. There are times when she comes home to see me and her mother. In those brief moments when she is under my roof my world is perfect. The world is not perfect but perfection can be found.

As it pertains to my heart, if the world was by its nature perfect, how would I have ever learned of grace? How would I ever have experienced forgiveness and reconciliation with God and loved ones? In a perfect world how could I experience growth and change? It is overwhelming to my soul that God uses the imperfections of this world to change me into someone He calls perfect. There is a perfect world but this isn’t it. This life is just the boot camp where we are made ready for it.