blog
i use my words
"Give us an advent spirit," he whispered as he ended his prayer for our meal. And as we picked up forks and drinks and napkins, that phrase kept bumping around inside me. And it bumps still. I don't feel expectant or joyfully waiting, and so I'm struck by those words. Give me an advent spirit.
i heard catherine rohr once say, “failure is really redirection.” that is so powerful, if only i could find a way for my heart to really grab onto it. ::
i feel like i fail a dozen times a day in a dozen different ways. while some of it is genuine mess-ups, some of it—i know—is really just that sense of not-enough-ness that hangs over me like a cloud. (i close my eyes and see that dirty little boy in the charlie brown movies—what's his name??—the one with the dust cloud that follows him everywhere.)
if i could really grasp failure as redirection, maybe just maybe that cloud would lift some...
::
not redirection to avoid what i’m facing. but rather to deal with what’s going on in my heart as i face it head on.
::
the old testament has always given me a great deal of hope. i think it's partially because those we consider men and women of faith have so much failure throughout their stories.
it makes me remember that they didn’t see themselves as people of faith in the way that we do now, gifted with the ability to look at their lives in their entirety. i bet they were just like me and—right in the midst of their grit—found themselves wondering if God could redeem their failures.
because we see their stories all the way to the end, we know He can.
i need to remember that He can see my story all the way to the end, and trust that He can redeem mine too.
::
perhaps failing well means choosing to trust that the story isn't finished—that the Author is still writing.
I want to live worthy of my suffering.
He’s assigned me my portion, and I want to live worthy of all of it—the gifts as well as the trials.
I’m not saying that God causes me to suffer. But He makes it very clear that suffering and trials are an inescapable part of this life. And I desire to steward well even that which He allows.
I want to live worthy of everything He entrusts into my care. I want to carry my suffering well.
I desire to face my lows with the same depth of character as I face my highs. I aspire to walk through the valleys with as much uprightness as I walk the mountaintops. I want my seasons of want to be as fruitful as my seasons of plenty.
To live worthy of my suffering means to carry my cross with humility, dignity, courage, faith. I want to bear my suffering honorably—not resenting the refining process or scorning the fire in which my faith is tested. I only want my faith to be proven genuine and for Him to consider me faithful.
I want to show myself trustworthy.
Even with this.
Because living worthy of my suffering really means living worthy of His suffering.
