Now Rachel has made it clear to me that she thinks failure is a bad word to use here. I understand her concerns and even slightly agree but sometimes it's important to get at the subjective experience before addressing the objective reality. Don't get me wrong the reality of a thing is super important and needs to be addressed. But before it can be properly understood it is sometimes necessary to acknowledge the individual experience. Failure is something we have all felt. The word "sin" is actually an archery term which roughly means missing the mark which is another way to see failure. It's true that failure can only be understood in light of the goal. If I give away my possessions but the goal of life is to make money I have by definition failed. But if the goal is to enrich the lives of others then I may very well have succeeded. So sometimes what feels like failure may really be an unrealized success with the correct focus. So after that long boring explanation I am going to say that henceforth when I talk about failure I mean perceived failure.
I sometimes feel like my life is defined by a succession of failures. These are not my best moments. Failing a test. Failing to make a payment. Failing to fulfill my duties. Failing to live as if I am redeemed by the blood of Christ. As a kid and into my early 20s I heard a lot of people talk about my potential. I sometimes still do. The key is the emphasis on potential with "unfulfilled" in parenthesis. It is a big part of what drives my depression. Last month when my life felt like it was falling apart (again) this was really driven home. My car died, got resuscitated, and then really died and I had no money to replace it. I passed nursing by the skin of my teeth which felt like its own kind of failure. I was informed that I never got the right forms handed in to the Army in very stern emails. I was being outright ignored by my doctor and felt helpless because of it. I was spiraling.
And yet in the midst of all that some amazing things happened which I had trouble fully appreciating. The nursing program tossed a final which probably would have failed me. My friends, family, and even near strangers moved Heaven and Earth and the contents of their bank accounts to ensure I could find transportation. I reconnected with people and found new friends in unlikely places. I found advocates in similarly surprising places. In the life of a friend I saw a miraculous turn-around. And most of this would never have happened or I wouldn't have appreciated it half as much as I do now if not for a series of failures. The failures made the blessings possible because God makes a habit of taking suffering and sin and turning it into something beautiful which no one could expect.
Most interestingly, through all of this I was shown how I was trying to work for my own salvation which is a deadly trap. We can never earn salvation even after the fact and yet it's so tempting to try and I didn't know that I was doing it. But, after a miraculous intervention I realized i still felt like crap because "it shouldn't have been necessary". Those were my words. And in that moment I saw the problem. The gospel of work harder and do better. Not that we should not strive to be better but the idea that maybe we're all sinful and broken but we can at least be a little better is a lie. A shiny turd is still a turd. A slightly better but still deeply flawed righteousness is a deeply flawed righteousness and no more acceptable to God. So yes work to do better to honor God and to express our love. But thinking that gaining a millimeter towards perfection will be the thing that fixes our problems? That's silly. And learning such a simple thing almost broke me.
So, being forced to confront my failures and running into them so frequently is an amazing blessing. Because I eventually have to admit my insufficiency. And once I do that I can much more earnestly embrace the grace of God. When I am weak (in myself), then I am strong (in Christ). Failures really are blessings because they illuminate the work of Christ and push us back to him. And so we can finally come full circle and say that in this light the things that feel like failure, whatever that is for you, can't be failures for a Christian. Because every scrap of it works for His glory and our good. And now before my words fail too, I will bid you all a good evening and a happy and blessed New Year.
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