failure

Where Else

~ Heather Davis ~ 6 Comments

When a person’s best efforts to serve God faithfully fall short; when life feels lonely and purposeless, your back is raw from cross-carrying, and the ministries you poured your heart and soul and everything into crash and burn, it’s tempting to wonder if the Lord really does care. Do our efforts really matter? Is all the sacrifice really worth it? At such times, only one thing stops me from quitting: I know Jesus has the words of eternal life. Where else can I go?

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.  So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,  and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:66-69 ESV).

Even if I don’t always like the truth, it remains true.

But in all honesty, every season of trial and every dark valley I’ve walked through in life was followed by a new dawn. There are moments of rest, refreshing, and joy. Even so, the times of failure and heartache often cast long shadows.

The truth is, my call was never to make something of myself, nor indeed to make something of my children (although I desperately wanted to make them dedicated heart, mind, and soul to Christ). My call was never to comfort, convenience, or even what the world calls success. My call was – and is – to die to myself; to take up my cross daily and follow Jesus. No matter what the outcome.

Cold comfort, maybe, but comfort nonetheless because it is true.

But then, there’s the beautiful part of Truth – it IS true. Even when my hopes, dreams, and efforts have collapsed into ash and ruin, there is always a light breaking into the darkness of the tomb; a breath of hope amidst the stench of death: none of this is forever.

No pain, no failure, no sorrow or suffering will last forever. Even if the last lap of my life yields only more failure, so long as I have Christ, it is enough.

There will come a day when living no longer means pain, fruitless toil and wasted time, lonesome weariness and grief. The tiny speck of my earthly labors will be swallowed up by Life – eternity in the presence of the Glorious One.

Where else would I go? Nowhere.

Even when the way is hard and dark and full of sorrow, there is nowhere else I would rather be nor path I would rather take, because no other road leads Home.

Homeschool Advice: Part 6 | Failure

~ Heather Davis ~ 2 Comments

In the early years of homeschooling, I began to re-evaluate the role of failure in life. I’d spent a good portion of my adult years berating myself for stupid mistakes, wasted time, and the like – to the ironic point of wasting more time stupidly dwelling on past mistakes. It changed when I noticed my ungodly habit rubbing off my kids and recognized the absolute desolation of refusing to learn from past mistakes.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
(2 Corinthians 7:10)

Instead, I began to tell my children what I had learned from mistakes. When they failed at something, I would repeat a phrase they likely grew sick of hearing over the years: never waste a good mistake.

I meant it. The usefulness of failure became clear to me during an afternoon chat with a neighbor on her front porch. She mentioned failing statistics several times in high school and talked about how much she hated standard deviations and probabilities. When she caught my blank stare, she asked, “Don’t you remember?”

I did not.

Ironically, I’d aced the class. Yet as the conversation progressed, it became clear she remembered far more statistics than I did despite her failures and my apparent success.

As I took this new thought to the Lord, He showed me where my personal areas of failure were now lessons more deeply etched than those areas I’d skimmed over by succeeding.

Because of this realization, I determined to not only allow my children to fail but to show them how to best learn from it. I didn’t withhold the large red X on incorrect problems, and I resisted the trend in my circles to give them straight As at the end of each grading period.

Instead, I graded appropriately. Good grades were earned, not granted. Whenever work was done incorrectly, I would bring the graded paper back to my little pupil and have them rework the problem. Together, we would think through what went wrong.

However, I did not change the grade. Instead, I provided a chance to learn from mistakes so the next grade would be better.

I wanted to challenge them, and I wanted them to fail so they would see failure is not an end. It is not a thing to be feared. Instead, failure is merely another step in the journey. In truth, failure can even be a more memorable step than instant success. Whatever we wrestle through, we tend to recall more vividly.

I’m convinced this is part of why God allows us to fail. By failing, we see our own fragility; our weakness and need for Him. Also by failing, we learn not to be afraid to try because we discover failure is not so bad, after all.

In fact, through failure, we learn humility and to better trust the God who never fails. 

"Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, 
remember the former things of old; 
for I am God, and there is no other; 
I am God, and there is none like me, 
declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done,
 saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,'
(Isaiah 46:8-10)

And Behind Door Number One…

~ Heather Davis ~ 6 Comments

Confession: Sometimes I doubt my calling.

Am I alone here? Probably not, yet even so I easily slip into feeling alone; into doubt and discouragement instead of faithful perseverance. I am particularly prone to such mental agonies when I have been praying for a door to open yet find myself standing in a hallway filled with doors which are all securely barred.

Or worse, when my efforts are called to mind with the crystal-clarity of hindsight and I recall all the ways that I failed to demonstrate love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest during my stint as a homeschool mom. My blunders stretch as far as the eye can see; great heaps of error which threaten to topple and bury me in inadequacy.

And yet… my King reminds me that not all obstacles are blockades.

In fact, my current situation kind of reminds me of Moses. In Exodus 3, we can read about God’s dynamic calling on Moses’s life – the burning bush and the undeniable command to speak to Pharaoh and ask him to free the enslaved descendants of Israel:

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
(Exodus 3:10)

Personally, if I had heard the very voice of God speaking from the depths of a flame that did not consume the vegetation it engulfed, I like to think I would move forward in my calling rather eagerly and certainly anticipating a high degree of success.

With all the ways the Lord equipped Moses – a staff that became a snake, an apparent miraculous manifestation and subsequent healing of leprosy – I imagine myself in his place approaching the great Pharoah with a slightly cocky swagger and a confident demand for the freedom of the Jews. Most likely while I stepped jauntily up to the throne, my mind would be filled with a pleasant fancy of the grateful masses hoisting me upon their shoulders and roaring, “Three cheers for Moses!”

But Moses did not exactly sprint from the burning bush to the throne room:Shh006

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  (Exodus 3:11)

Not only did Moses begin his conversation with the Almighty with this apparently self-deprecating question, he continued to hem and haw and generally drag his toe through the dust like an unwilling child through a rather lengthy dialog, eventually submitting his final request:

But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”  (Exodus 4:13)

If I am brutally honest, that sounds more like the actual me. When I look at the strewn remains of my failed attempts, I hear my own voice echo very similar words: “Do I have to, Lord? I don’t seem to be very capable. Can’t You find someone else?”
Eventually, Moses did go, albeit reluctantly and only after God agreed to send his brother, Aaron, along as the key spokesman. Of course we do not know whether Moses entertained grand fantasies of being hailed as the rescuer of the people or not, but naturally one would expect a seamless success from such an unmistakably clear calling, especially when bolstered by the confidence of the people:

Aaron spoke all the words that the LORD had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.  (Exodus 4:30-31)

Things were bound to go well from here, right?

Wrong.

The first interview with Pharaoh did not precisely result in an open door to freedom. Instead, the door slammed firmly in Moses’ face:

The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’   (Exodus 5:6-8)

And rather than receiving honors and accolades, the formerly worshipful group of slaves now criticized their mighty deliverer:

“The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”  (Exodus 5:21)

This was not going well at all.

Of course, most of us know that after many such interviews, several broken promises, and no small amount of signs and wonders which Pharaoh’s stubbornness escalated to dire proportions, the people were finally allowed to go free. The Egyptians even gave them much in possessions, very possibly in the hopes of being well rid of the calamity.

Persistence and faith won out in the end, and at some point Moses even gained enough confidence to take over the office of spokesman from his brother. Yet the fact remains that Israel’s circumstances became much worse before they improved.

Today, I am reminded that not everything that looks like failure is.

Just because my calling has not brought the success I imagined does not mean I have misunderstood it (although that possibility remains!). Sometimes, obstacles in the path make the journey more rewarding in the end.

But at other times, the obstacle is the point. Real-life success often appears in different clothing than fantasy success, and not all locked and barred doors are impassable.

Sometimes, learning to trust God in the face of repeated failure is what we were called to do all along…