I’ve been reflecting on failure in some form or another for about a month now. What it is, what its opposites are, how it plagues me, how I will relate to it.
As I contemplate failure, success doesn’t seem to be the other side of it. I think perhaps because success to me is a box checked off or a number on a page, but failure is a haunting, pervasive feeling.
Then I realize that is because I’m not actually haunted by failure, but the fear of it. That is what embroils me. The anticipation. The unknowing. The uncertainty. I am afraid I will fail.
We all fail. We all succeed. The action of failing slips away into the past, like most memories. The actual event may be important, or it may not. The fear then is maybe not of failing.
To be a failure. That is what I am afraid of. I am afraid not of the event, but of the way that event clothes me, the feelings that slowly sink into my skin, convincing my heart that the lines between who I am and what I do are inconsequential.
Then I am angry, because it is my own habits and nothing else that leaves me in that state. It would be better to be tougher, or more humble, or to learn to let things go more quickly. So I face the jumble inside myself and see it once again: I have failed. I am failure.
It’s not that I don’t want it badly enough or that I don’t hate it thoroughly enough. I drum up energy and emotion and still the facts are there. I am weak and cannot always succeed.
I am left with no alternative but to be still and know.
As I quiet down, I hear the words, “This is not a test.”
Words that make me think of shouting over fire alarms, but they are not loud. A simple reminder that what is in front of me is not a test to be passed or failed, but a life to be lived, a life full of many-varied moments, a life made for love and not worry.
I strip off the identities that I have wrapped around me like a blanket and sit instead at the feet of the one who created who I truly am. I am not failure, I am simply me. Complex, intricate, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, always moving forward into the unknown.
An unknown that need not be cloaked in fear, whatever it may bring.
I have learned it is easy to get discouraged when I look at the world, my world, with my natural eyes. As humans we are trained to measure ourselves by what we do, by what we accomplish. Yet Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4: 1-5 that he did not even judge (measure) himself. He knew it was his responsibility to keep his heart right with God and endeavor to walk out God’s will for his life. I had a Pastor that wrote out in 1933, when he was fourteen, his deep commitment to Christ in “To Be A Christian.”
“To Be A Christian:
To be a Christian, as I understand Christ, means the acceptance of the absolute authority of Jesus in all of my life. It means that in everything I am and do—when I eat and drink, when I buy and sell, when I work and play, when I read and think—that I look to Jesus as my Master. It means that I enthrone Him as King in my affections; that I subject my friendships to His dominion; that I conduct my business and my intellectual and social life under His inspection and direction. It means that my ruling passion—the passion that shall absorb all other interests shall be to live my whole life under the sovereignty of Jesus. It means that I honor His name above every other name, and place obedience to Him above every other obligation.
To be a Christian means that I am no more my own man, but Christ’s man. It means the giving of myself away to Him, so that I have no more right or title to myself; so that I have no more claim upon myself, and am no more at my own disposal. To be a Christian means to belong body and soul to Christ, now and evermore, for Him to do with me as He wills.
Hence, it means that in being Christ’s man, I am set free from all fear. My joy must be in doing His will, in being His slave, in the confidence that whatever comes to me, when following Him, is His doing. In a real sense, I make Him responsible for my life. I am responsible for following, He is responsible for leading and keeping. It can be none of my business what happens to me, what I gain or lose, when I follow Him. That is Christ’s business. It is His to command, mine to obey. I am sure He will not waste a fragment of my life if I let Him possess and direct it. I am also sure it will be mainly waste, friction, vain striving and misdirected effort, sickening failure and defeated ambition if I try to direct my own life.
My part as a Christian is not to find out the opinions of men, but to keep my eyes fixed on Christ, to let my mind dwell on Him, having a constant mental vision of His character; to make His life the food on which my soul shall live; to make His gospel the textbook and authority by which I stand or fall.”