When Failure is the Only Option

The past year of my life has been more a blur than anything else.

It's a blur of long shifts and of sleepless nights. Full of homework that never ends and studying always to be done and never being quite caught up. It's a blur that burns with the aftertaste of too much coffee consumed. It is a jumbled mess of moving and moving again. Boxes and boxes. It's a blur of missing friendships and overwhelming feelings of loneliness and of isolation because of the demands of school and work. It's a blur of feeling shaken because school wasn't allowing time for church or time for others or time for sleep or even, sometimes, time to breathe. It was a blur of oftentimes being too overwhelmed to even be able to respond to a text message or return a call.

It was a blur of often being too busy to try glean from my Father's Word for more than a few minutes each morning when already only 4 or 5 hours of sleep was normal. And if the time did come it was fleeting and I would be too worried about what else needed to get done that day that I never felt present in the moment. Again and again and again I would try each day to chase after Jesus and live a life for Him. Time spent diving into the Word was time spent pouring over pages and pages of the psalms, adding to tear-stained pages and scavenging for refuge in reading about David's kindred, troubled and relentless heart.

My prayers began to ring the only chorus I could conjure -

Jesus, I'm doing all of this for you. It's all for your glory. But I can't find you in it. 

I'm tired. I'm worn. I'm unable.

I've failed.

Have you ever felt that God has led you to a place and left you in that place?  With everything in me, I knew that God has directed me to pursue a particular avenue in school. With everything I had, I was rearranging my life to be able to devote myself to doing all I could to see that come to fruition. I changed my job schedule, my living situation, my budget.  I sacrificed time with friends, ministry opportunities, and time with my fiance.  I've spent the last few years of my life working to have a perfect GPA and working to build a resume in order to open doors for nursing schools. I spent months planning every detail of the next few years of my life to prepare for the even more rigorous school ahead.

And I had never felt more alone. More inadequate.

I had never felt more like I had failed Jesus in my life.

 But thank God His ways are higher.

He's brought me swiftly to a new direction through a series of beautiful confirmations and a heart that feels revived and alive again. I know with all that I am that for a season God asked me to pursue nursing, and He has recently pivoted me to pursue social work.  I can't wait to dive into it and use this as a tool to pour into people's lives.  But more importantly than a career change for the sake of a job, God has really been pouring a peace that transcends all understanding into my heart to know that this past year was about so much more than a career.  

I am so thankful for a God who doesn't limit his pursuit of us within the confines of our personal comfort. I can't articulate just how broken this past year had left me - but in the best way possible. God is too loving to let us stay in a place of idle idolatry. Of complacently seeking God yet knowing your heart is rooted in other desires or fulfillment. I'm so thankful for a God who will stop at no great length to show his extravagant love. The past year of my life has been a journey of humility for God to bring me to circumstances where my heart could find no refuge in anything except for trusting Him. I was pouring out my life into a career field I hated, losing friendships that I loved, letting church be sidelined and letting my pride and personal capability be the rock on which I stood. 

And God is gracious enough to lovingly hold my hand as He walked me into valleys where all I could do was hold onto His hope and crawl through it all, searching for the hem of his garment. I had become selfish, prideful, impatient.  I felt like my performance would dictate the level of glory brought to God and had fallen into a mindset of fighting to earn the cross. The better I could do in school, the more glory. The more I could prepare for the future, the more glory. The better I could do at work or the more I could master sleeping less or the better I could become at managing my own life and making it display excellence, the more glory for my God. It was all for Him. This show was for Him. Surely this is what He wanted. Surely this was taking up my cross. Surely one day I will wake up and this would be easier.

But each day I was failing more and more - tests would fall on the same day or extra shifts would get scheduled at work or extenuating circumstances would interfere with homework getting done. Grades started to fall behind and friends got completely ignored and church attendance started to be optional and life started falling apart. I had no other place to go but to just pray a prayer of surrender. I knew He promised His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I needed Him to do what only He could do - and whatever changes I needed to make, I would. I knew in my heart that we are not just created to fight to survive, but to flourish. I knew there had to be more.

It's beautiful and painful when God brings you to moments when your humanity is blatantly staring back at you. I had fallen into a mindset that the moment we claim to live for Jesus, our lives must be flawless, fast and fruitful. If we don't meet a mark or don't display the inerrant efforts of the God we claim live inside of us, we aren't truly saved. I had began to believe the faulty system that if we aren't living at a standard of excellence then we aren't living as Christians. The harder I worked, the more I realized that even though I was giving every bit of energy and time and sanity I had, I still wouldn't be able to pass the classes I needed to meet school deadlines I had set.  I was trying to live for God and did everything the best I possibly could, yet my best wasn't good enough. 

But God has it in mind to use this season as a season to teach me that regardless of what we do - He is enough.

God will definitely bring you to a new place, but not to leave you there. He is teaching me a new thing about His grace and a new understanding that He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses - He created us with both. We are created purposefully with specific and unique needs that only He can help meet. He know when we sit and when we rise. He knew is when we were knit together in our mother's womb and knows the moment of our last heart beat. It's easy for us to believe that He is Alpha, the beginning, but we are so quick to lose sight of Him truly encompassing the Omega. He is the beginning and the end. He didn't create you, love you, and send His Son to die for you in hopes that you might be His only last hope. He created you, loves you and sent His Son to usher you into His eternal hope. His eternal victory. His perfection that can't be marred by our failures, His grace that can't be changed by our frustration, His love that can't be tainted by our anger and His mercy that can't be shaken by our shortcomings. He is our All and All. He makes it all beautiful in His time and in Him all things are held together.

But it is in these moments, through temptations of brokenness and regret and pain and suffering, that He will show us that it was never even about our success. It was never about our accomplishments. It was never about our quota of jobs well done. 

It was, and is and always will be about Him. He was, and is and always will be on the throne. We aren't fighting and holding our breath to see who wins this cosmic battle of good and evil. God doesn't need us, He loves us. We aren't here to be orphans trying to earn our stay; we are heirs to the King.

But until we choose to let His victory be won and to believe that, regardless of what we can do, He has overcome... it isn't until then that we can truly see the His strength made perfect.  In our weakness, He is strong.

The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
 - Isaiah 30:26