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.

Spaced Out! :D

A super nerdy video for my spaced out blog!

Isn't it amazing what we humans have been able to do? Don't you think MER almost has his own personality? My favorite parts are when the big balloon thing drops out of the air and start bouncing around in the ground. I also like it when the arm comes out and start buzzing up the rock face. So. Awesome.

Zero Negative Space

For the thousandth time my friend walked up to me and started complaining about me not having a Facebook. "Tina, why don't you have a fb??!!" I started the usual response by listing all the evils of the internet, but that left me so unsatisfied. My reasons for not having a fb have always been, up to this point, because my parents said no. There have been many times where I complained to them about being deprived of an internet social life. But, I really saw the wisdom in what they said. Not having a fb has left me free of so much misery that I see in other friends. This is not true of every person, but I know that for some people fb has left them tied in knots emotionally. I would love to go into a discussion about that, but not right now.

First, I want to think through exactly why I don't have a fb. I have thought and thought about it until it hit me this morning. The question is,

"What does fb have to offer me that I don't already have?"

Well, nothing at the moment. I have a fine social strata, a phone that I text on all the time, a blog, an email, ect...

The honest reason I don't have a fb is that I don't need one. For me, if I don't need it I don't have it. I mean, I intentionally cut it out of my life. In order to better explain this, I need to dig a little deeper into a different discussion. Believe it or not, it's a discussion of negative and positive space.

Aftermath.

I am found, in the aftermath...

Head Love and Heart Love

There are lots of different kinds of love. I figured that out.

Easy love and hard love.

Fast love and slow love.

New love and old love.

Cheap love and precious love.

Heart love and head love.


And sometimes, very, very rarely those two loves are deeply and mysteriously intertwined to create the very best kind of love- head-heart love.

That kind of love is the deepest and the rarest, and so hard to find these days.

I found that love.

Search my Heart.

Lord, search my heart.


Search my soul....

Biggest Loser.

If I haven't told you already, I'm deep into a season of loss. This year I've lost more than I can express. There are just those years in everyone's life where God takes everything away... everything. You walk alone and everyday is more painful than the previous.

The first thing I lost was my sense of life mission. For years I've wanted to be an overseas missionary. Through special ways, God has revealed to me that's not exactly what He has in mind for me. That has been crushing to accept.

The next thing that happened is that I lost two siblings at once. My sister married and moved away and my brother graduated college and moved to Mississippi. The loneliness I've experienced because of that is piercing.

My uncle passed way. My grandpa left us. Just when I thought nothing could get worse, I had to face something I never expected. My closest friends changed so fast that one by one they moved on to different stages of life.


Do you know what it's like to have a best friend? Do you know what it's like to love someone more than you could every express? To lose that person is to lose so much of yourself. The grief that consumes you is enough to take over your whole life.