Snapshots
January 22, 2009
Part of my job entails keeping up with the comings and goings of about one thousand college students. All have arrived at the doorstep of adult responsibility, and all must walk through as best they can. Some glide. Others stumble.
Students are constantly arriving, eager to fill their hungry minds and lavish themselves in newly found freedom. Others have found that those freedoms can lead to all sorts of trouble and so are on their way back home.
The status of these students must be cataloged and recorded and then shared with various departments by way of email. Very businesslike, these emails. Concise and emotionless. But they are to me snapshots of lives in transition.
One such message came across the computer yesterday. The usual fare—student’s name and identification number, and her status. But then there was this:
She will not be returning and is withdrawing.
She failed everything.
As I said, businesslike. Concise and emotionless.
I’ve always had a problem with brevity. I have a habit of explaining a small notion with a lot of words. Which I guess is why that email struck me so hard. Here was three months of a person’s life, ninety days of experiences and feelings, summed up in three words:
She failed everything.
Though I don’t know this person, I can sympathize. I’ve been there. Many times. I know what it’s like to begin something with the best of intentions and an abundance of hope, only to see everything fall apart. I know what it feels like to realize that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t. Can’t win. Can’t succeed. Can’t make it.
I know what it feels like to fail. Everything.
When my kids were born, I wanted to be the perfect father. Always attentive. Never frustrated. Nurturing. Understanding. And I was. At first, anyway. But things like colic and spitting up and poopy diapers can wear on a father. They can make a father a little inattentive, not so nurturing, and very frustrated. So I failed at being the perfect father.
Same goes for being the perfect husband, by the way. I failed even more at that.
And I had the perfect dream, too. What better life is there than that of a writer? But no, that one hasn’t gone as expected. Failure again.
At various times, struggling through each of those things, I’ve done exactly what young girl in the email did. I withdrew. Not from college. From life. I gave up. Surrendered. Why bother, I thought.
But I learned something. I learned there’s sometimes a big difference between what we try to do and what we actually accomplish. That many times we don’t succeed because there’s an equally big difference between what we want and what God wants.
That failure is never the end. It can be, of course. We can withdraw and not return. Or we can learn that it is only when we fail that we truly draw near to God. We can better understand the that our prayers must sometimes be returned to us for revision. Not make me this or give me that, but Thy will be done.
I’ve failed everything. Many times.
Also remade.
I may not have made myself the perfect father, but God has made me a good dad.
I may not have become the perfect husband, but God has shown me how to be a soul mate.
I may not write for money, but I do write for people.
Failure has not been my enemy. Failure has been my salvation.
Our lives have broken places not so we can surrender to life, but so we can surrender to God. And failure will hollow us and leave us empty only so we may be able to hold more joy.
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I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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“Our lives have broken places not so we can surrender to life, but so we can surrender to God.” …so very true. thank you for reminding me, billy. my life has not at all turned out as i had desired and dreamed, and that has caused much struggle with God… but it truly is not my will but His… and He does use the empty places and the broken pieces if we will surrender them into His loving hands. my desire is to continually hand them over…to give Him the failures, the fears, the empty places and see what wonderful works He can make from them.
i’m glad you’re writing for ‘people’ and that i get to be one of them!
From one failure to another, I too, am glad that you write for people!
Your words remind me of my life verse: “…my power made perfect in weakness; for when I am weak, then I am strong…” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
I love how God chooses to use those who “fail at everything.”
It seems I never grow if I don’t stumble. Seriously, it’s during and after my “failure” that I change. And change for the better.
Whether it be a better friend, person in general, wife, Jesus follower….you name it.
It’s almost as if God uses our failures to whittle away at my hard outter shell, to get at the soft clay inside so He can mold me.
I just wish I could be that clay all the time and not let that hard shell form…
One of the most difficult lessons I learned was I couldn’t excel at everything I tried, nor was I supposed to.
But God wastes nothing. He showed me I can learn far more from my failures than my successes.
I thought the same as Sharilyn: I’m glad you’re writing for people and I get to be one of them.
Oh Wow! I love that. I have been and continue to be remade. Isn’t He so glorious and gracious and what He makes is always so much more than what I could’ve imagined. Thanks for sharing!
For me, it doesn’t matter how many times we failed, the most important is, we tried to stand up and move on. That’s how we gain lesson in life, that’s what shape us to be spiritually strong and through that we know how to appreciate blessings and success.
It’s an opportunity to see and learn from other people’s lives, their struggles and sacrifices. But somehow, we can live as their light and anchor and a friend.
“And failure will hollow us and leave us empty only so we may be able to hold more joy.”
– AWESOME. Hard to see that this is what we NEED when we go through it but after (you know, that old “hindsight” thing) we come out on the other side and that’s when we see what God has done amd made us into. Failure is such a harsh word until you really know and understand what will come of that failure. Usually, if we let it, it will be a blessing.
Thanks for writing for ME! You are so talented and I thank God for your words, my friend.
I am glad to be one of those you write for!
This touched me today! I have failed so many times only to learn a little more, put the failure behind and turn the right direction the next time. His direction…
God Bless Billy!
Brokenness – isn’t that the goal? When we have it all together, when things are perfect, are we really in need?
I have failed over and over again, in every way you described and probably then some, brother! What I am finding, or where I am trying to spend my energy, is in the midst of it all asking the question “what do you want from me here, God?”
It is here, in the brokenness that he really reveals himself! “When I am weak then I am strong…”
Thanks, bro!
I wonder what we think of as success. Maybe that’s something we must reconsider…
Amen, Billy. As someone who once tried her hand at being a potter (and failed, by the way), we’re a lot like a piece of clay. Everytime I screwed a piece up, I kneeded it back down again and again. Each time, the clay became softer and more pliable. I guess that’s what God is doing with us, making us easier to work with!
Sounds just like the post I made regarding the hard decision to withdrawl Hannah from Kindergarten because she just wasn’t quite ready yet. It truly is our salvation when we fail because it’s God that realligns us to where we need to be. Failing humbles us and teaches us that God is the answer to things; not the dream we invision or where we often misplace our identity, but that God is OUR identity and it’s Him we must find joy in satisfying. Once we do that than everything else will fall in place.
Thank you, Billy, for such a great post! I seriousy needed to read this today. I think failure is really that only when we don’t try again or learn something from it. Thank you for your insights and words of wisdom, and thank you too, for writing for people. (Though I strongly suspect that you actually write for God, and we people just get to enjoy the fruit of that!)Blessings!
But in God’s eyes, are we ever failures or just people who need a little tweaking with hope, faith and love?
I love this: “Failure has not been my enemy. Failure has been my salvation.” I, too, have failed so often at my various roles in life. God makes up the balance. Thanks for the reminder.
Great post! I confess, I’ve failed too. But it’s out of those failures that we get to experience more of God’s Mercy and Grace. And through the process, we have the opportunity to learn from those battles to prepare for the next time something comes our way
I once interviewed a man who was an illegal immigrant into the US before he naturalized as a citizen. I asked him what was the most important thing he could give his children. His reply? failure. He said they have to learn to fail before they learn to succeed. Otherwise, the success will be meaningless.