Intentional Failure

Failure. Now that’s an inspiring topic. Can’t we just stick with how to move on from it?

Actually, no. We can’t ever move on from anything without first staring it in the face and figuring out why we need to move on from it, and how we can avoid going back to it. Avoidance of the subject perpetuates the consequential outcome. More failure.

Let’s name some kinds of failure.

I immediately think of the kind where I’ve tried and it just didn’t end up looking like success from any angle. For instance, when I tried to learn how to swing a golf club.

First of all, I was used to swinging a baseball bat. Not helpful. I tried so hard to unlearn how to swing a bat, and instead keep the one arm straight while slightly bending the other. I tried lining up my feet just so with the golf ball. I looked amazing. Until I actually swung.

What came next will be forever burned into my brain until the day I die. I’m actually laughing as I write this. I kind of wish we caught it on video, because I looked like a mashup between a constipated stork and the Queen of Heart’s attempting to play croquet. Only I didn’t have the helpful, voluntary moving targets, or the compliant animals to help me look like a champion. I’m not even sure how my body ended up in the shape of a pretzel. But, I was told that I was a cute pretzel. So, there’s that.

I made up my mind very quickly that I really didn’t care to play golf. Ironically, I ended up working at a country club as my first job out of high school. Thankfully, my position had nothing to do with actually golfing. Failure. I tried, I failed, I didn’t really care. I learned that I don’t want to spend my time learning golf. Life moved on.

Or, what about the kind of failure where I tried and got frustrated, so I gave up? So, this leads me to when I attempted to learn how to play tennis. I really did want to learn how to play tennis. And if I would have kept at it, I probably would have been decent.

At that particular time in my life though, I was not so chummy with failing. In fact, I found it humiliating. To the point where when I was given pointers on how to improve my game, I took it as an attack on my personhood. Sounds dramatic, I know. But, it’s true. I had not gotten to the point of being okay with failing so that I could learn how not to fail. Failure. I tried, I failed, I didn’t let myself see the good in the critiques, so I quit. I wish I hadn’t.

Oh, then there’s the failure that I really didn’t want. Like super didn’t want. The one where I invested everything. I felt so sure that this was going to be my ticket to mending the broken fragments of my life. The one that took me months, maybe even years to work through the grief when I watched it all blow away in the wind. And even though my life came to a halt, the rest of the world kept moving as if my dream didn’t matter. I wished that I could become dust and blow away too. The one where no matter how hard I tried to move on, my heart betrayed me to the point of sleepless nights, anxiety attacks, and eventually, numbness.

For me, this was my miscarriage. We did not plan to get pregnant for at least two years. Although, I was always open to the idea if it should happen. I love babies!

We got pregnant. Two months into the marriage. And then two months later, after seeing the baby’s heartbeat and getting excited about becoming a mama, I miscarried. I was absolutely devastated. What in the world? Why? Why would God do that to my heart? Why would he give me my dream, and then rip it away?

I had so many people try to explain it away for me. “Well, God needed another cute baby in Heaven.” Or, “You just have to wait for the right soul to be given to you.” Well, ouch. Does that mean that I wouldn’t have been a fit mother for the baby, or the baby wouldn’t have been a fit child for me? Either way, it made me feel worse. I wanted that baby, but I didn’t get the privilege of holding it in my arms. There’s nothing settling about my baby dying. Failure. I didn’t even try to get pregnant, but did. Then I wanted to be pregnant, and my pregnancy failed. I was devastated. I got to a point where I was angry at God. I actually hated him. Life was frozen for me. I didn’t know how to move on.

It took years of counseling and medication for me to climb out of depression with suicidal thoughts. I still feel sad sometimes when I think back to that time. So much was going on behind the scenes of my life that contributed to that being one of the darkest moments on my life’s timeline.

This leads me to the next kind of failure. The kind that I didn’t really want to have to go through, and prayed that I didn’t have to. Where I worked so hard to try to find success, but after a long while, I realized that the only thing in the way of me shining as I should, was the very thing I’d been so desperate to fix. And upon further thought, realized that I couldn’t fix what was broken, because it was in the hands of someone else. So, with a heavy heart, I chose to let it fail. Intentional failure.

This was my marriage. For years I hung my head when my husband wasn’t pleased with what I did or how I did it. For years, I put up with verbal, physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse. Because, after all, doesn’t the Bible say that wives should be submissive to their husbands in everything? Doesn’t it say that wives should respect their husbands?

Here’s a news flash. That’s spiritual abuse if you leave it without the context in which it was written. Let’s look at this one point at a time.

So, if it is true that wives should be submissive to their husbands in everything, would I be sinning if I refuse to murder a person if my husband asks me to? Would I be sinning if my family is about to cross the street and I see a car coming that my husband didn’t see, so I yell for him and the kids to stop so they don’t get hurt? Would I be sinning if my husband asks me to watch pornography with him, but I refuse because I don’t want another woman in our bed with us, even one on a screen? I think you see where this is going.

Similarly, how can one respect a person who is not living respectably? If my husband treats me with disrespect, is it possible for me to respect him?

Yes and no. Yes, I can respect that he is another human, made in the image of God (the Imago Dei). I can choose to respectfully remind him that I am also the Imago Dei, and I too deserve to be well taken care of. However, I do not have to respect the actions done against me that violate what God has already ordained as proper and good.

I challenge you to look at the passage this comes from.

Ephesians 5: 22-33 (NIV)

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

32 This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

First of all, do you see the book ends here? It starts out as a reminder for the wife to submit to her own husband, just as she does to the Lord. Would God want you to murder someone? Then, submit to the Lord. Would God want your family to get hit by a car? Submit to the Lord. Would God want you or your husband viewing pornography? Submit to the Lord.

Submission to my husband should never compete with my obedience to God.

And if it does, we have an issue. Because, like the cream filling to an Oreo, the next portion of scripture addressing the husband is what makes the whole thing stick together. What woman do you know, that if her husband loved her so much that he treated her like an equal, cared for her like it was his own body, and even gave up his life for her, would then be like, “Meh, he was okay.”? Let’s be real here. Women, we would join forces and slap that woman to next year. We would have a come to Jesus moment with her. Because who in their right state of mind wouldn’t want to submit to that?

And then comes another reminder to the wives to respect her husband as he loves her as he loves himself. This is a call to both women and men to live according to how God ordained marriage to thrive. This is not a call to a woman to submit to a selfish and abusive husband.

It is a high calling to be a husband. One that God himself takes very seriously. In fact, so seriously, that he makes it abundantly clear that the weight of the success of that marriage weighs heavily on the husband to keep it pure and healthy, so that the wife is able to do her part to submit and respect.

My marriage did not reflect God’s design. It took me 15.5 years to realize this, even after multiple counseling sessions. I was stuck in the mindset that I committed to this marriage and nothing is ever supposed to end it. Divorce was not an option, although I did eventually threaten and then follow through with it. Failure. I tried, I tried so hard that I even tried to fix the whole marriage by myself, but I couldn’t. No one can fix a marriage all by themselves. Because we are each responsible to work on our part, not the other person’s. I’ve heard it said this way, “It takes two to tango, but only one to mess up the dance.”

Intentional failure. When I choose to walk away because it’s clear that I’ve done all I could. And success now takes on a new meaning. It means I decide that I am worth loving well. That I need to be nurtured in a way that my talents and gifts radiate the glory of God to those around me without being blocked by the cloud of oppression. It means that I get to decide to come alive and let my Abba wash me over with his love and affection. And whatever comes, he is there with me. Loving me with a fulness that can never be taken away.

I wish I could say that I learned my lesson and now I’m living in a state of immediate discernment. Where I can sense in a situation whether or not I need to let it intentionally fail or not within days of living it. I have not. I have had other devastations that felt like a throat punch. Looking back, I could have walked away sooner, but then I wouldn’t have had the valuable lesson of once again, coming to the realization of the worth that God has given me. That moment when I run back into his open embrace and cry my brains out because, “Why did I let myself do that? I knew better. I knew it would end up hurting, but I did it anyway.” And what better comfort and healing is there, than to know the one who flung the stars into space, predestined me to be his daughter, and forgives my every failure, whether intentional or not, is not surprised at where I am. My story is not a surprise to him. And somehow, he will weave all my failures into a beautiful story where I am redeemed, forgiven, and free. Where I see a mess, he sees a masterpiece. So, I will trust him with the details, and learn to love my failures, because failure procures character.

Romans 5: 1-4

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.