The gift of failure.

When I boarded the plane for Pennsylvania I felt like I had made a mess of everything. I know I've mentioned before that failure seemed to be a theme throughout my senior year, but as the summer played out it was especially ridiculous while I remained unemployed and moved back in with my parents. And it wasn't that I knowingly made a lot of bad decisions or anything. I tried to 'follow all the rules' and seek wisdom from the right places in every decision I remember making. But at some point last year I lost my ability to tell up from down. The black and white I used to live in became grey and all my decisions turned to guesswork.

But I figured working at camp might be good. It would at least be a break from unemployment. Within a week I knew something else was going on. When my campers first started pushing the rules, being disrespectful, etc. I thought that this would be great chance to learn how to deal with kids. How to talk to them, have fun with them, listen to them, discipline them. Nope. Wrong again. My summer at camp quickly became another lesson about failure. But better than that - a lesson about accepting it and not letting it break my heart.

Since camp was a job it made it a little easier. If I lost my temper with my girls I was not doing my job well; I needed to do my job well. So I either learned quickly how not to be discouraged by their attitudes and complete disrespect, or I went home without a paycheck. Sounds like Survivor? That's because that's what it was like.

Camp magnified my post-graduation-identity-crisis and forced me to find answers. Quick. I learned not to take people's criticism so personally. I learned that even if everything bad someone said about me was true it didn't matter. I learned that every single day I have to remember who the Lord thinks I am and cling to that like its my job. Unless I am grounded in the truth that, yes I'm a failure and yes, I am redeemed, I cannot live. That sounds like something I should've known and heard all my life, but I was never in a situation of such discouragement and self-consciousness before that required me to know and remember those specific truths.

I thought when I got home from PA I would need my parents to love on me and remind me daily that I'm not worthless. That I'm not unlovable or disgusting or completely and totally annoying. But I didn't need it. As I thought I was being ripped apart, the Lord was actually building me up. He was showing me all the ways the world could see me, some true and some untrue. And he was letting me know that it didn't matter. It doesn't matter if everyone thinks I'm ugly or creepy or boring because HE doesn't think that.

I know I messed up A LOT of things last year. I tried my best not to. But- its alot like my parents always told me in school after a failing grade. They asked me if I studied hard and did my best. And when I honestly replied that I had, they said that was great. It wasn't about the grade it was about the effort. If I am seeking the Lord's wisdom and I screw everything up. . .I am still okay.

He's perfect, not me. I am going to try to live like him. When I mess that up I am going to remember that. . .of course I did. I'm not Him. I'm not capable of perfection. My story - whether I live well or I make messy mistakes - isn't the point. And why live in guilt when He doesn't want me to? He did everything that was needed to free me from that a long time ago.

I am a complete failure and I am completely free.