I Failed This Time.

So I've been going through old diaries and compiling a notebook of my high school years. There's a lot for me to go through in my life. Frankly, I just want to forget that whole time. When it was really good, it was really, really good. When it was bad, though, I would lose all hope. I don't like going through my past like that. It goes against my grain.

However, there are certain things that if you don't deal with them right away, it will screw you up for years and years- maybe the rest of you life. For me, it's my anger. I've pretty much come to the point in my life that I cannot move on until I've dealt with my anger. There are things that I wanted- things I had my heart set on and they were ripped right out of my grasp. When I want something that's really, really good and I don't get it, I just stew on it forever.

That pretty much sums up my diaries. What I wanted. How bad I wanted it. How much it hurts that I don't get it.

I feel like a grape between the pavement and God's thumb.


God has this incredible way of squashing my dreams.

He also has this incredible way of showing me for who I really am.


Reading my diaries forces me to look at myself. It forces me to see the mighty hand of God in my life. Those diaries are just a long and selfish complaint against God. He gives me good things, and I covet them. He takes those good things away and I lash out at him.


I have so far to go still.

I Failed This Time. This Time..... I Failed.


God has broken my pride. I've told you before and I'll say it again. I've lost so much this year. Really, I had my life all worked out. All my friends were right where I wanted them to be. I had the next ten years of my life all mapped out.

Then, guess what? God slammed the door in my face.

It not about you, Tina. It's not about you and your amazing ministry. Your gifts are just that- gifts. They can be taken away as easily as they are given.

I have failed as a friend, as a sister, and a daughter. My life is all twisted in knots sometimes. Honestly, I don't know what's around the next corner. I'm just going to school and doing my time. One foot in front of the other. That's the way it goes.

Failing is a human thing. Rome wasn't built in a day. Edison took years to see the light. For every person that has summited Mount Everest, I'm sure there are two that have failed.

Right now, I just feel so human. I feel really, really human and really, really young. I feel so young. I feel like I have so many years to go. I feel so finite. And God feels really infinite right now.

I don't know how else to describe this. Success and failure... what do they have anything to do with eternal things? These are waves on our graph of the progression of redemption. Everyone fails sometimes. In the end, we will look back and see what exactly was the purpose for all of these failures.

Failing helps me remember I'm human. It humbles me and brings me back to what really matters in my life.

I won't always fail. Sometimes I will succeed. But, the little things I succeed at in this life are not where everything ends.

What if.... instead of failing I had succeeded?


What does that profit me? What I have now is a sobering lesson in the realities of life. What I have gained from failing I never would have learned by succeeding:

1. I'm Human.


2. This is not where life ends.


3. It's not about me.