When You Feel Like You’re Failing: A Different Way to See Your Days

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What I keep telling myself as I flail about in the last quarter of the year: “There is no failure, as long as you don’t fail to learn.”

Every failing is another step to success.

There is no failure as long as you don’t fail to learn.

And here I am learning how to raise my 7th child, and how to champion a forth year university student, and what it means to be a parent to 5 full-grown adults living their own stories, how to be all that many new daughter-in-loves need to flourish, how to be a brand new Amma to brand new grandbabies, and what it means to be present to aging parents struggling through health complications, while being committed to learning new ways to love the same faithful man for decades so that he can be all he is meant to be, tending every day to a flock of 20-some sheep, investing in church community, and studying as a doctorate student of spiritual formation and soul care.

I’m really bad at all kinds of things. Which is exactly what happens if you’re risking enough to learn all kinds of new things.

Full lives are full of all kinds of failure.

Only succeeding — is actually only proof of lack of growth.

And in these late September days, I’m trying to learn how to make sourdough bread and I smile a bit when it comes out of the oven smelling like an invitation to come home — but I overproofed it and it’s less than ideal, but I’m becoming more than some ideal— I’m becoming more experienced.

When I slip the kinda flopped loaf onto the rack on the counter, I glimpse out the kitchen window, the porch’s perennial garden right there where the roses are being devoured by sawflies and I overcrowded the lilies back in the spring and I didn’t sufficiently contain the hollyhocks who are romping a bit too riotously everywhere now. Every gardening year is an experiment, and actually: Everywhere there is growth, there is experiment, and every grand life is a grand experiment in trying.

You can have a comfortable sense of success, and a life that is ultimately meaningless —or you can live through the discomfort of some sense of failing and into to a far more meaningful life.

As long as I’m still failing, I’m still working on growth.

Only succeeding — is actually only proof of lack of growth.

Maybe the real life work is less about succeeding, and more about becoming a curious student of failure.

May be the every day work is to realize:

You can have a comfortable sense of success, and a life that is ultimately meaningless —or you can live through the discomfort of some sense of failing and into to a far more meaningful life.

The learning curve of all growth is found on the curve of failure.

And after I clean the kitchen counters, feed the sourdough starter, tuck my wee flock of sheep into their little barn, tuck a little girl into her old bed, read the last chapter of the text for the doctorate studies and turn out the last light, that’s what I’m thinking at the very end of the day — that maybe, in some ways, this entire frame of success and failure needs turning all around and upside down.

Success and failure as constructs are not terms found in the Bible, success and failure are not terms of biblical measurement, success and failure are not what God’s world are about.

When historians and archaeologists look back at the successful kings of Israel, those who won wars and accolades, those who built monuments and kingdoms and whole catalogues of accomplishments, who they is deem as one of the most successful and powerful kings ever in Israel, the one who they credit with the building of a royal citadel and palace at Samaria, the construction of the massive fortress at Jezreel, and historical records like the Mesha Inscription noting his powerful reign that expanded Israel’s dominion to include northern Moab east of the Jordan River — they point, not to the Israeli King you might expect — but to King Omri. Assyrians were so in awe of King Omri that they actually called the whole of Israel “Omri-land”

But, unlike historians, apart from saying how Omri came to power, the actual Bible makes not one mention of King Omri’s accomplishments.

Omri may be deemed historically as the greatest King, but the One who is very King of the Universe names David as the greatest king, because David was a man after His own heart and the heart of God is Love.

Who the annals of history deems a success, is very different than who the God of Love names as His.

Because for God: Success isn’t about the accomplishments of your hands, but the posture of your heart.

Because for God: Success in this world that doesn’t last — isn’t lasting success.

Success in this world that doesn’t last — isn’t lasting success.

Because the reality is: This isn’t actually a ladder world.

This isn’t a world about climbing some rungs and relentlessly trying to avoid slipping some rungs. It isn’t a ladder world.

This is actually a love world. For God so loved the world — that He gave. This is a love world and love lives given.

This is a world about the givenness of love, about living given— this is a world of gifts.

This is a gift universe. And everything is about gift, whether we live with a heart posture to receive the free gift of His Son, the gift of His love, of His joy, of His strength, the gifts of His grace upon grace, and gift of the wisdom of His ways — and how we are living in ways that become a gift.

This isn’t a ladder world, all about climbing rungs. This is a love world, and all about living given.

Everything in the real world that actually lasts has little to do with some culturally determined standard of success and failure, but about getting out of bed every day and asking:

How can I be a gift today?

And getting into bed and asking:

How did I live given today? How was I gift?

Because at the end of your days, it won’t matter much if your obituary boasts of how many rungs you climbed or what ladders you scaled. Because what carries real weight in the real world that lasts is love, and love lives given.

Successes that are about notice and number and scale, can’t compare to the weight of a gift that is for the one, and for an audience of One who left the 99 for the one.

God isn’t interested in the ladders we climb, but the love we give.

There is no failure, as long as you are living given, as long as you are being a gift.

The sourdough may not rise, and the roses may be all eaten by sawflies, and the laundry may pile, and the bills may pile, and the to-do lists may pile, and this whole chapter of the story right now might be messy and tender and not going the way you hoped or imagined, but in the real world that lasts, in the love world, in the gift universe, all there is to really learn is:

There is no failure, as long as you are living given, as long as you are being a gift.

I’m a slow and happy learner, and when I cut the sourdough loaf in half and turn it around, I’m reframing everything in a love world that doesn’t have ladders, and I see it a whole other glorious, grateful way.

And I grab some parchment paper and twine, and wrap up this little imperfect loaf –because even it looks like a love gift meant to be given away.

Wanna Change Your Life? Want to Ground Yourself in a Gift Universe, in a Love World, in Love Himself?

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