Imperfect Progress
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“He failed.”
This was my daughter’s response when our cardboard creation fell flat as I expected it would with only 1/4 of the legs mounted to stabilize it.
“Do you think falling is the same as failing?” I asked her.
Her silence confirmed why she has been deeply frustrated by some of the challenges she’s faced lately. To her, falling was failing.
I pondered my answer. After a few moments of silence, I told her what I want all of us to hear: “Falling is NOT failing; falling is part of fearless learning.” In learning to follow Jesus, we will certainly fall in every stage of the game. Whether or not you see it as failure, will determine how quickly you get back up.
I answered the phone to the sound of tears. Not just the soft kind, but the kind that you shed when you're on the brink. The kind you shed when you're staring into the same old pit and feel like there's nothing you can do to keep yourself from tumbling down. The kind you shed when you feel like you're there all over again, in the place you never wanted to go back to. And it feels like the same old struggle is the same as it's always been.
Between tears she said, "The thing I'm the most scared of is that I haven't changed."
Lean in loved one and listen closely, because truth sets us free. Imagine we are face to face, I am staring you in the face with my finger in the truth, and maybe a bit of your face, because it’s a battle out there, but we have what we need to live victorious.
Earlier tonight, I had the privilege of hearing a church planter share the exciting things that God is doing through his church. He talking about how frequency is important with getting the word out when he went and used a blogging analogy which immediately made me hide my face.
“He must be having a bad day.”
These were the words I said to Mike as a man in a car passed us on the highway waving wildly at our truck and trailer combination.
“What’s his problem? We weren’t doing anything wrong!”
The man had waved wildly as he passed us, pulled over to the side of the highway and continued waving as we drove by him. When we turned left a few minutes later, he was still waving wildly as he passed us.
A few minutes later, an SUV pulled up beside us on the gravel road we were travelling down, minutes away from our camping destination. With a concerned face, the woman rolled down her window and said, “Your bikes are dragging, hey?” Mike immediately pulled over and we jumped out of the truck to investigate.
As it turned out, the waving man wasn’t having a bad day; we were.