He makes the most startling statement, that these years of failing health and declining memory are the best of their married lives. There is no pretending now, no parading. Only honest, dependent love.

Does God feel the same? Might He say, too, that after all these years of trying to give him what I think is the perfect me, what delights him most is receiving the real me, heart wide open to Him?

Is honest, dependent, thankful love what true love is all about? What perfection is all about?

The word in Greek is telios. It means “brought to its intended end.” Is not this our intended end, precisely that for which we were created: to live heart to heart with God, enjoying and being enjoyed, our hearts open to Him and His to us?

This could change everything, this realization that perfect is less about getting it right all the time than about living wide open to love. The good work He has promised to complete in us is less about picky perfectionism than about sharing in the gospel, that wonderful grace in which we, messy and broken, are loved into wholeness by being joined to Him who trades our sin for His righteousness. (Phil 1:5-6; 1 Cor 1:30)

The sun sifts through clouds and the tulips, still wet, open their hearts a little wider.