The BraveHeart Story of Vivian Cumins in Perfectionism to Finding Peace

Dawn Damon: Hey, all you wonderful, amazing, beautiful bravehearts! I am so glad that you are listening in today.

Now, you're going to find freedom because my guest is coming to you from a place where, well, she found freedom. She's a writer, a blogger, a storyteller, and a speaker who grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. She's a military spouse, a stepmom to two adult kids, and glammy to five. We love that I'm a glimmer, but she's a career professional who admits that she once had a need for perfectionism and control. It led to an unbalanced lifestyle with work and self-inflicted stress, illness, depression, and anxiety. But today, she Actively encourages busy women to seek balance in their lives. Would you please welcome to the Bravehearted story of my guest, Vivian Cummins.

Hi Vivian!

Vivian Cummins: Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you this morning.

Dawn Damon: We are so glad that you are here because God has given you some amazing morsels and not just morsels, but a revelation about this thing called perfectionism. So we want to get to know you a little bit and hear about your story, but you do admit that you needed to be perfect. Is there even such a thing as perfect? Talk to us a little bit about this thing called perfectionism. I have some questions for you about that. Where does perfectionism come from? Is it rooted in fear, I'm not enough, or pride, or is it rooted in something more insidious, maybe a stronghold, something from the enemy?

Vivian Cummins: I would say yes to everything you just said, I will tell you for me, I didn't realize that I struggled with that until about three years ago. So about three years ago, I just had gotten to the point in my life where I was really tired of myself. I was tired of striving. I was exhausted all the time. I was mentally and physically just beaten down and I knew I couldn't live like that anymore.

One day I just fell to the floor in my living room and I said, Lord, I am so done with all of this, whatever you need to do in me to make me ready for whatever my purpose is. Because this cannot be it. I know you did not because me to strive and be stressed. So whatever it is that you need to do, I'm all in. That was when God really led me into a wilderness season that lasted three years. I just came out of it and showed me, I should say, number one is the balance. And then we just backed it on up and God started revealing to me kind of some of the, the nucleus of why I was. The way I was, and the one thing that he brought to my mind, which is, is such a vivid memory.

It goes back to kindergarten and I was five years old back then you got to take naps in school. I remember having a little blanket, it was kind of like a little mat and it was time for our nap and I could not get mine to lie straight. So I would fan it and I would fan it over and over and over because it kept rippling. While all the other little kids were down for the nap, I was sitting here fanning this and my teacher at some point got tired of it. She said, if you do that one more time, I'm going to give you a spanking. I remember being just so incredibly angry with her for that. It wasn't because she embarrassed me or yelled at me. It was because she was asking me to accept mediocrity. Even at the age of five, I didn't know what mediocrity was, but I knew that I was angry with her for making me do that. So as I'm lying there on this matter, you know, trying to straighten it out. I'm trying to get the ripples out because it wasn't perfect. I could not relax until I had it perfect. God revealed that memory to me and, you know, it's so precious how he works because he was doing something in me. He's trying to show me, you know, where these things are rooted in to prepare me for the deeper conversations that we would have. Which would be really what you've got is a stronghold of pride. So that's what he revealed to me, but he did it in a way to first allow me that opportunity to have some compassion for myself and not beat myself up because we were about to go through it. So whenever I start, you know, starting to feel a little bit like, Oh my gosh, I'm striving again. I always look back to that memory of that little girl and that helps me get through.

Dawn Damon: You've said so much right there and I really do want to unpack this because I think this is an important message for women, especially in our culture where women are always getting the messaging from social media or whatever it is. You're not something enough. You need to be more thin. You need to be younger or more beautiful, or you need to be taller. You need to be richer, whatever it is. So that need of ours to be accepted to be perfect. That is pride when we think about it really at its roots. Or is it also fear like, I'm afraid that if I'm not perfect, I won't be accepted? I'll be abandoned. I'll be rejected. Maybe the origin of this perfectionism, I have to ask you, do you think it came from something that was out of control in your little life at five years old that you needed that control? Because it wasn't that you were trying to fit in, not at five years old. So perfectionism is the smokescreen for so many other potential issues in our lives. How do you break out of that? I've asked you a lot just now.

Vivian Cummins: Oh, no, that's fine. No, because God and we've already been through this. So it's fine. I think sometimes it's learned behavior and I believe, I mean, at five years old, that's when you're really starting to understand your surroundings and you start picking up habits that, you know, those around you have and my dad is a perfectionist. I remember everything around our home was always very nice and tidy and neat. I always had to have even at a young age, my room had to be clean all the time. My bed had to be made. Even today, it's a joke now with my husband, my bed's not made right now. And it is driving me crazy. As soon as we get off here, I'm going to go make that bed.

So I think some of it was a learned behavior and it was, you know, doing things to please my father. He's a wonderful man. There's nothing, you know, I'm not saying anything negative. I'm just saying that was a learned behavior for me. I was trying to get that acceptance over time. It starts to morph into other things. I think in the beginning it was that acceptance. I think there's still a portion of that. I recently put myself through a little exercise about the bed because I'm like, okay, what would happen if I didn't make that bed? As I was thinking, it was like, well, okay, what's inside me is if I don't make that bed, there's a part of me that fears my husband will think I was lazy that day or that, you know, I don't know. So I'm thinking, okay, if I was the only person on earth, would I still make that bed? Probably not. There's that fear of the perception that I'm lazy or whatever. Like I said, there's, it could be something that is a learned behavior. It could be fear-based and then eventually. It morphed into pride for me at the very end of it.

Dawn Damon: That makes sense because I'm showing up. I'm perfect. And somehow then that helps me feel more than adequate. I feel like I'm not going to look like I didn't. Prepare and I'm, you know, not intelligent enough or successful enough, but also is there a line between excellence? Cause I'm hearing that excellence is good, right? I mean, when we go to, we go to work and people say, you know, well, my weaknesses, I'm a perfectionist or I love it when people love excellence. But when I hear perfectionism, I think, Ooh, you're going to not meet deadlines. You're going to take too long on projects. You're going to be a struggle if you can't get over your own perfectionism and accept that this is good enough. I mean, as a coach, you know, we say make your bed every day we say good enough is seldom good enough, you know, we say those things, but perfectionism can really be crippling and cause a lot of paralysis in getting us to move forward.

Vivian Cummins: Yes. and that's what it was doing to me. It's funny that you mentioned that I'm in the process of hiring some new staff. As people come to me and go through interviews and they say was one of their weaknesses and it's a trigger for me, like you just said, I'm like, okay, oh boy, I can't have a bunch of little me's running around here because exactly what you just said, you know, as I grew into my adult years and I started getting into the workforce, that was exactly what I struggled with, you know.

Some of my background is in employee and labor relations. So I did a lot of legal writing. I'm thinking, okay, this is going to get before a third party or a judge or something. It has to be perfect. Anything that left my desk had to be perfect. Well, I was working till 10, 11, or 12 o'clock at night, sending out emails at all hours of the night. That went on for many, many years. And although my work product was perfect and I was praised for it too, by the way. So sometimes as employers, we tend to do that.

Dawn Damon: It kind of becomes your identity that I do things right. I do things with excellence. I do things with perfection. That does become an identity that we can be proud of and sometimes that can slip into a bondage, right?

Vivian Cummins: Absolutely. I thrived off that, you know, so it was just kind of a vicious cycle. I would have that behavior, but then I would get rewarded for it. So I just continued to do it until my body started telling me we couldn't do this anymore, started breaking down.

but our body is saying, okay,: 2020

Vivian Cummins: Now, keep in mind, I've been a born-again Christian since I was 12. I knew about the wilderness. I knew that, you know, if you pray for patients, you better get ready. I knew that when I rededicated my life that day and said, I'm all in, I knew I was in for something and it literally happened right away. It started with things that I couldn't control, right? So it started with both of my parents. My dad came down with cancer. My mom was diagnosed with type two diabetes. Almost. I mean, she was dazed within losing her eyesight.

There were two things and I've always been very. protective, if you will, over my parents. It's just one of those things that comes with that perfectionism. You got to take care of everybody and they were in another state. So I couldn't get to them right away and that was very, very difficult for me. Then my own health started being attacked.

One of the first things that happened, this was right. Before COVID became a thing. I had gone to visit my mom and dad, my dad was having surgery. So I had gone there to help them out, you know, get them through that process, and on the way back, I became very, very ill. It was probably COVID, but I didn't know it at the time, but I became very, very sick on my way home. Shortly after that, within like three or four days after that, I got a really horrific bout of shingles. Which is just horrible. If you've ever had it, it's the worst ever. Yes, I have had it. Oh, it's terrible. So I got the shingles and then just one thing after another, you know, I was getting a lot of urinary tract infections, just everything, like heart palpitations. I ended up in the hospital thinking I had a heart attack at one point, had really bad chest pain, and so forth. This is just crazy.

So the week prior to my landing in the hospital for my suspected heart attack, I had gone to the dermatologist because there was a spot on my nose that I'd had for three months. My dad also has skin cancer as well as the other type of cancer he has. I thought, well, I better go get that checked out since apparently, that's a thing in my family. It turned out that that was nothing. But the doctor did a full-body skin scan while I was there. I'd paid my copay, might as well and he found a spot on my left leg. So we biopsied it that day, and I didn't think anything of it.

after another and then all of: 2021

Dawn Damon: No, I can imagine. Well, you're very brave. That's why I wanted to have you on today to talk about your brave story. The word “Brave” sometimes we think is just these heroic acts, but it's showing up with trusting in God. Believe it or not, that's a brave activity, human beings want to take control and we think by holding on to control. Oh, well, it's an illusion, that somehow we're actually going to protect everybody. It's a brave thing to say, I'm laying it all down, God, and I'm trusting you. This season for you with melanoma, did you learn a deeper trust in God? I imagine it just had to bring you to your knees in a brand-new way.

Vivian Cummins: It did and this is how God is so good, so good. He started speaking to me in dreams. I've always been an avid dreamer, but never spiritually and God started speaking to me in dreams. So I had to have a lot of tests because of the stage that it was, there was a concern that it had already metastasized into my internal organs and bone. We were doing lots and lots of different tests and I had one prayer for negatives. That's all I wanted. It just. Negatives and God came to me in a dream. And do you mind if I share my dream?

Dawn Damon: Yeah, no, please do.

Vivian Cummins: Okay. So I had a dream that I was in a room by myself and I was holding an envelope an 8 by 10 envelope and it was bulging and it was addressed to me, but there was no return address on it. But I knew who it was from. So I go to open it and all of these negatives fall out. Do you all remember back in the day when you had the film in a camera and you take pictures and when you go get that camera film developed, you get these copper-colored strips, they're called negatives, and that's how you get copies of pictures made. And so that's way before iPhones.

Dawn Damon: I want to say, yeah, no, I don't remember that.

Vivian Cummins: I feel like I have to explain that because not everybody knows what negatives are. I knew what they were and I knew in my dream what they were. I remember in my dream, all these negatives come falling out of this envelope and I'm just joyful and I pick up one of the strips and I hold it up because that's how you got to see what was on that is you had to hold it up to the light.

Vivian Cummins: So I held it up to the light and in the strip was my husband, our kids, and all five. Well, I had four grandkids at the time, all my grandkids, they're playing and they're having fun, but I wasn't in any of those negatives there. What I wasn't there. I was aware in my dream that. Even though I wasn't there, my family was okay. Everything was going to be okay.

I woke up. I had been sobbing in my dream and I had woken up to my pillow. It was soaked. I had been crying in my sleep, but I had so much peace that number one, I asked God for negatives and he showed me negatives. I mean, how clever and creative is God? And he also showed me that just, I got this. So whether you're here with your family or your home with me, your family and you will be taken care of and from that point on, I was fine. I was honestly fine. I had to go through, I mean, it takes about 10 to 14 days to get the results back for all of those things.

So I went through the rest of that waiting period and I was fine. That doesn't mean that I still had a little bit of anxiety because I didn't know what I was going to have to go through. I knew that the end result, whatever it was, was going to be fine. That's the peace that passes all understanding, isn't it?

Dawn Damon: Yes. When God gives us a word, that peace just envelops us and we just rest in that.

For me, my experience is not even like I'm choosing to rest in it. I just become enveloped in the rest of God and it's just a beautiful thing. You probably weren't in those pictures because you were taking the pictures. You know what? That is absolutely amazing. Do you know what? I've never thought of that.

Vivian Cummins: Thank you. I look at that in a whole new light now.

Dawn Damon: There you go. See you were behind the camera. Well, that's an amazing story, and thank you for sharing that. I just for those that are listening just parenthetically want to pause a minute. God has such amazing ways to speak to you, my friend, whether through a dream through a conversation with someone you're driving down the road and you see a bulletin or a. What do we call them? Billboards. God has ways of speaking to you. Now we take that. Of course, we line it up with the word of God but don't miss the voice of God. Don't miss the language of faith. When God shows you or is speaking to you, grab onto that. You got a promise there that gave you so much peace.

I remember when my daughter was struck by a car and she was fighting for her life in the hospital. I had a very clear impression and the word from God wasn't audible, but it was just really audible in my ear in one week, this would all be over. This piece came over me and then it was like, well, what does that mean? Does that mean I'm going home with my daughter? Or does that mean we've had a funeral? What did that mean, God? At that moment with that word. It mattered, but it was like the peace was so powerful that I didn't need to know, but what I did do was I exerted my faith and said, I chose it to mean this. So thank you God and I'm speaking that. But either way, like Job said, you know, my God is well able to heal me but if not, in the end, I will say my God lives. But anyways, so. God saw fit to bring you and you're cured or you're in remission. What is your health thing? So then God teaches you this balance and now you have three things that you teach people about balance, but give us a health report.

ise God for that and that was: 2021

At the end of 2021, my husband, you know, he's retired from the Air Force and we retired in Utah and that's where our kids are. That's where our grandkids are, our friends, everything, but. There was an opportunity that came calling for my husband to take a position here in California. We had no plan on moving to California or anywhere. So we prayed on it and said, okay, God, whatever you say. And so here we are moved to California at the end of 2021.

I had the opportunity to go to a Christian writers' conference here in California, which I would never have had the opportunity to do before. It was only about two hours away from my house. I was going through, so I'm still in the wilderness at this point, still going through all this stuff. I have one more dream, I'll make it quick. But I had a dream that, you know, I had just battled the cancer. Everything was great.

I had this dream that I was on a road and there was an enormous, you know, like Godzilla-sized snake on the road. There's all these people lined up on the road and they watched me slay this huge snake. Everybody's cheering. As I turned to walk away, somebody said, watch out. I turn around and the snake rears back up and starts to strike. So of course, then I wake up. It's terrifying, but I knew right then when I woke up, that was God saying, it's not over yet, baby girl. We have some stuff we have to go through, be ready.

Last year was a year of spiritual warfare. I had never experienced that in my life, but last year. I went through it. So at this writer's conference, I was really in a very, very dark place. I went there searching for answers and clarity and didn't know where my writing career was going. I didn't know what he wanted to do in my life. I felt like I'd been humbled at that point, but I just didn't know what was next and so fell into a lot of anxiety and depression actually. When I was there, I had a mentor assigned to me and as we were talking through it, it was almost a counseling session. We didn't even talk about my writing. We just kind of talked about where I was and where God had me. She took my notebook and on the page, she wrote the word balance. That's all she did. She didn't say anything. She just wrote the word balance and scooted it over to me. I was like, Oh, and then it's just kind of funny because at that point, everywhere I went on this campus. Somebody said something to me about balance and somebody, you know, had, Oh, you're a great balance of this and that. I'm just like, okay. So the word balance came to me about five or six times within a four-day time period.

So on my way home, I was driving home and I just was talking to God and I said, okay, I hear you. You know, this is my testimony. This is my life, my life experience. I want to now take what I've learned, incorporate it in myself first, and then share it with other women, because I see so many women just striving and working so hard and being so busy, and we weren't created for that. So the three things that he has really spoken on my heart that I share at this point is number one, keep God first. Always keep God first. Number two, self-love and self-care. And then number three, make time for fun. Those are the three things that I incorporate in my life now to stay balanced.

Dawn Damon: So I'm just going to repeat those again. So make God first. So God's the priority. I imagine you probably first thing in the morning. I know that's my habit as well. Greetings God, good morning, Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit guide me today and get into the word. So God first and then self-care. Which we always say is not selfish, it's self-care, allowing yourself to do what you need to do so you can sustain the call of God on your life and continue to, because this body is the carrier of the spirit and the soul that we're out doing God's will, right? So we got to take care of ourselves and then, hey, that's a novel idea. Have fun. And we don't do that very well, we don’t. As I was taking an inventory of my life, I was looking at it and I was like, I haven't had fun. I mean the real fun in many, many years.

Vivian Cummins: Yeah. You know, and I just posted something this past weekend. I wasn't in the mood to go have fun this weekend. So my husband and I are very intentional. Usually, we take one day on the weekend. One day is kind of, you know. I have to take care of stuff at the house, whatever. But then we set aside one day of the weekend and we go do something. I was kind of feeling a little frumpy and crabby this past weekend but fine.

So I got online and kind of was looking up for some stuff to do and found something for us to do. We had the best time and we met some wonderful people. The weather was gorgeous. We went to an outdoor art park and just walked around and looked at art and met wonderful people. I was so glad that I forced myself to do that. So sometimes we have to be very intentional to add that stuff into our life.

Dawn Damon: It's so important. That's a great word. I think that's a really important word. While we've had many important words today, as we kind of bring this to a close, we've talked about perfectionism VS excellence. We've talked about the root of perfectionism. Is it insecurity? Is it fear? Is it pride? Is it selfishness? Is it a habit? And I think we say yes to all of that.

If you struggle with perfectionism, we encourage you to get to that root and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what's going on. We've also talked about dreams and revelation, and that requires a pretty close relationship with God to understand how we might be speaking to you. This has been a rich time together, Vivian. We have so much more we could say.

Then we talked about the balance and the three things that you should really incorporate in your life. That was time with God, time for yourself, and time for fun. All those amazing, wonderful things. What would you say in closing to someone who is listening today, their mind, their body, their soul, whatever it is that you want to leave somebody with?

Vivian Cummins: You know, I mentioned it earlier, but God did not create us to strive. He wants to be our helper. I would encourage all of us to let him do his job. That's what he wants to do. He wants to walk alongside us. He doesn't want us striving. He wants us to thrive. So I would just encourage everyone to, you know, take inventory of where they may be having some extremes in their life and turn it over to God and let him work with you through that.

Dawn Damon: Such great words. I have to just say this. I don't normally wear it like this, but I just have to say, it's okay. We are the national champions. Michigan won the championship yesterday and football is such an exciting thing. That was the fun that my husband and I had. We had a great time watching football. Dreams do come true. But thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Hey, all of you who are listening, I want to encourage you. I've got a free gift for you: Daily Brave Journal. I'd love you to have. I believe that we've talked about putting God first, and sometimes you need help establishing a morning routine. I have a journal that I'd love for you to have. In that journal, I walk you through how to establish a morning routine. I give you the journal pages. Stop by at braveheartedwoman.com, all the things in the notes and Vivian, how can people reach you and find some of your resources?

Vivian Cummins: Thank you for that. They can go to viviancummins.com and on there, I have a blog that I try to update every week. Then also too, I have some YouVersion app devotions, and three-day devotions that are linked to there so they can go check those out as well as all my other socials, and so forth.

Dawn Damon: Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us. Make sure that you check that out and all of those links will be available to you all in the show notes.

This is Dawn Damon, your Braveheart mentor. I'm going to leave you like I always do, braveheart. It's time for you to find your brave and live your dreams!