Failure. This word, this concept haunts me. But it isn’t just the act of failing, it’s the guilt that follows that weighs me down, holds me captive. I fail every day. I fail as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a child of God. I could go on and on. And often I do, in my mind, list the failures of the day, or at least the ones I can remember. The time I forgot to bring flashlights for my daughters on “flashlight night” at AWANA; the time(s) I snapped at my husband because I was tired/hungry/frustrated/just plain cranky; the time my son cried because I was too busy to help him fix his Lego truck; the time I pushed through a difficult situation and patted myself on the back for the way I handled it, only to realize that not once had I stopped to pray and allow the Lord to guide my thoughts and words. Many nights I’ve laid in bed replaying these and a multitude of other similar scenes, cringing at my attitude and my behavior. The guilt can be unbearable. It usually hits me like a ton of bricks as I’m fussing at the kids or arguing with my husband. And it doesn’t go away. Each failure of the day piles on more guilt, until I’m exhausted from carrying the weight of it around.
Recently it has become obvious that God is trying to teach me something through all of this. It started at a small group we attend where we studied Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel. It’s a great read, one that will leave you with the undeniable promise of God’s grace and love despite your circumstances. In one of the chapters, Manning writes about how we will never fail as much as God expects us to. Growing up in a Christian family and going to church all my life, I’ve been taught that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” and there is nothing I can do to make God love me any more or any less, and my “sins are forgiven as far as the East is from the West.” I know this stuff. So why was it such a shocker to me to hear it this way, using the word fail? It was one of those “aha moments,” when you put the pieces together and it makes sense in a way it never has before. God’s endless grace and unconditional love are far greater than the bricks of guilt I carry on my shoulders. I was reminded of a story from another of Manning’s books called The Furious Longing of God in which he encourages a victim of abuse to sit every morning with her palms upturned and pray “Abba, I belong to you” over and over. She was transformed by the realization that she is “furiously loved” by our Father, and nothing can change that. Not even my predisposition to fail.
During another one of our small group discussions, someone mentioned a quote that said something like “failure is an event, not a person.” Such a simple statement, but boy is it powerful. This resonated with me deeply, and my mind has returned to these words many times since I heard them several weeks ago. Then the other day when I was driving to work, I heard a song called “Redeemed." It was like the words were written for me:
Seems like all I could see was the struggle/Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past/Bound up in shackles of all my failures/Wondering how long is this gonna last/Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son/Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"
I am redeemed, You set me free/So I'll shake off these heavy chains/Wipe away every stain, now I'm not who I used to be/I am redeemed, I'm redeemed
All my life I have been called unworthy/Named by the voice of my shame and regret/But when I hear You whisper, "Child lift up your head"/I remember, oh God, You're not done with me yet
And that’s when I realized that I need to pry myself out of this selfish pit of beating myself up because I messed up. After all, feeling guilty is a pretty self-centered notion, you know? It took a while to come clear to me, and I still have a lot to learn. But for now, I know this: I am human, I am fallen, and I will fail. Every day. But I am also redeemed. I am forgiven, each and every time I fail. And there is no fight. It’s already been won. I am a child of the Almighty God, and His mercy, His grace, His love will never fail.
