An A+ in Failure

Picture courtesy A. Squires and family

I thought I was alone in my misery. I could hide behind the computer screen and disguise my pain. Ignorance is bliss when others are in the dark. If you know what I mean. 

Any hope I had of maintaining a status quo evaporated when I read her status update: “In desperate need of prayer.” She spoke volumes without saying much at all. 

I collapsed like a Lego tower while reading my pain between her lines. By focusing on her pain and praying for her unknown crisis, I distracted myself. 

I imagined her pain wasn't as bad as my own. In a moment of selfishness, I hoped it was worse. Anything to make me feel better.

Hours ticked away while I waited for an update. When it came, I was not relieved. Her confession sailed out of the screen and into my heart as surely as a marksman's arrow meeting its aim. She could not keep up with all life is throwing at her. She felt like a failure.

Courtesy D. Scott

I dropped my cyber-mask. “Oh, you? Me too!” One brave confession led to others. Stronger hearts reached out to comfort weary ones. Bandaids for the soul appeared via the magic of cyberspace. If only the comfort would last forever.

Night turned to day before I was through sleeping. Truth is: I'm never through sleeping anymore. Maybe I'm reverting to a 2^nd childhood with days and nights confused? 

Sleep is the easier choice because I am always running from the to do list I never make. I never make it because it will be written proof of how often and how big I fail.

I never make the list, but I always keep a tally in my head. I feel my shortcomings before my eyes are open each morning. I will never be who I want to be or accomplish what I want to accomplish. Why even begin to try again given how far behind I am?

I turned the shower on and let the water run over me wishing the old me would wash away. I don't have the energy to cry out much anymore, so a whimper had to do. 

“Hello, God? Fix me? Make today better than yesterday?” If I signed up, I doubt the Army could help me be all that I want to be. If God can't fix me, the Army sure can't.

Courtesy A. Hughes

The yard needs to be mowed. The back forty looks like a tropical rainforest again this summer. Let's don't talk about shrubs that need trimming. I don’t qualify for an episode of hoarders, but clutter has the upper hand right now. 

Who am I kidding? It most always has the upper hand. 

The kitchen. Is still. In process. The bathroom wallpaper I started stripping the night before I broke my leg 2 yrs ago? You get the picture. 

The taunting voice echoed in my soul, “Psst! Failure. Failure. Failure. You can only manage the minimum it takes to get by. F-a-i-l-u-r-e.”

As despair taunted me, an echo filled my soul:

No, my child, you are not the airbrushed model on the magazine cover. You are not the thin, beautiful blogging homeschool mom with a dozen kids and home business on the side. You are not the famously published author with legions of fans. 

Every day you hold up the measuring stick the world offers and find yourself wanting. Your eyes are filled with the taunting implications of perfection around you.

What you can't see is the reality behind those airbrushed images. You've bought the lie of Facebook success stories, Pinterest wonderlands, Twitter feeds, and magazine covers. The lies that say, “This is what success looks like.”

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

No one pins a picture of wakeful nights spent with a hurting child. How do you pin hours of tears shed after sleep overcame his pain. No one videos the reality of hard fought battles in the trenches of long division for YOU TUBE. Who tweets an Instagram of homelessness? Images captured in the gritty reality of ICU don't tell the tale of death's knock at your door. Yet, these have been the 'pins' of your life. These and more.

Don't you see? I see you. I see you in the trenches. I see you fighting to survive one more day: one more fever, one more broken heart, one more setback, one more disappointment, one more assault to who I say you are in me. I see your perfection even if you don't.

I didn't say I was looking for the fastest, snazziest runner. I am looking for the one who will finish the race. You got up today. You ministered to family and friends around you. You are doing what I have called you to do. Only I have a 'pin' for days spent surviving in the trenches of your life.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Oh, fraidy cat, I don't know the fear that chases you today. I do know most everyone is running to keep up with images of perfection permeating our world. 

He sees you. He sees the hard fought victories in sleepless nights. He sees the loneliness a 'pin' cannot describe. He sees the guilt when an A+ in Failure mocks you from the pinboard of your life.

He looks at us and sees the sacrifice of his son. In that sacrifice, he redeemed and redeems the failures that haunt us. On the Pinterest boards of eternity, he sees you on the one labeled 'Perfection'. 

Underneath the board is an A+ whose url links back to all the things he saw when no one else was looking. Love you long and strong. So does he.

2 Timothy 4:7 (Amplified Bible)

I have fought the good (worthy, honorable, and noble) fight, I have finished the race, I have kept (firmly held) the faith. 

 

Oh, Grave, Where is Your Victory?

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

As I contemplate the incomprehensible richness of Easter, one of my dearest friends sits with her father. The veil between this earth and his eternal life is parting. The end is near. I wonder, will Easter bring his Heavenly resurrection?

We had known the end was coming. Dementia and the trauma of a vehicular accident robbed him of his vitality. His decline was slow. It was grueling. Yet, when the call came, it came too soon. The email took my breath away. Knowing the urgency of these hours, I wept for my friend.

That's the way it is for those of us grappling with our humanity. Death, even when it is a relief from suffering, comes too soon. No matter how successful our lives have been nor how long we've lived, few of us will slip away without looking back over our shoulders.

In our humanity, we wish we could tie up the loose ends we are leaving behind. We wish for a chance to finish what we started, to correct the mistakes we've made, and to continue to watch over those we love. Even for those of us who believe in life after death, this fraidy cat world is a hard place to leave.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

A man named Jesus hung on a cross. Had he died as my contemporary, many of us would have shuddered and uttered the words, “He died so young. Too soon. He had so much left to do.” He was only 33 years old. Yet, with his last breath, he uttered the three most powerful words ever spoken:

It is finished. (John 19: 30)

He finished what he came to do. He had no need to look back over his shoulder. There were no loose ends left. He died a perfect death.

Tonight my friend sits where I sat. I can close my eyes and am there again. I hear a silence so deafening that it swallows the hiss and whir and beep of the machines working on her behalf. Alarms sound. Voices come and go. We watch. We wait. We whisper. Up and down the hall, voices hush as our reality begins to fill the intensive care unit.

Another family we have just met is beginning the process we are finishing. In their state of shock and grief, they huddle in a circle, join hands, and begin a whispered prayer for us. A daughter, a daughter of the King, is going home. We are on holy ground. You feel it in the air.

The nurse who has so tenderly cared for my mother this last day on earth leans down and whispers, “Just think, when you wake up again, you will be in the arms of Jesus.” The smile spreads slowly across my mother's face. I think it is a hesitant smile. Her death is coming as a shock.

2009

No one is more surprised by her impending departure than is she. She writes, “Not my will, but his....” At 80 years old, she feels the tug between two worlds. “Time to go, but I have so much left to do, don't I?” her eyes seem to say. I can only guess because the ventilator has stolen her voice.

And then, it is finished.She is gone.

The process repeats itself hour by hour, day in and day out. One imperfect life after another gives way to an imperfect death. In every imperfect death you can hear it if you listen closely. There is an echo. It is the echo of that perfect death suffered by the perfect, earthly Son of God. The echo calls us to him. It is the echo that calls out to answer when we ask, “Who am I? Why am I here? Does anyone care? Do I really matter?” His perfect finish provided the perfect answer to the cry of our soul.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

He finished so that we would never have to utter, “It is finished,” when death comes calling. We matter. We matter so much that he lived and died a perfect death. We matter so much that he conquered death to give us eternal life.

May his perfect finish answer the cry of your soul. May you find peace in him this Easter morn'. May the Lord of the Resurrection fill you with new life and may you be able to say, “Oh, Death, where is your sting?”  (I Corinthians 15: 55)

John 3: 16 (Amplified Bible)

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten ([a]unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.