I truly failed.  Now what?

I failed.  Completely and totally failed.  I fell face down in the mud.  I messed up.  I did what I shouldn’t.  I missed the mark.  I didn’t do what I should have.  And worst of all I gave up.  Growing up I remember hearing that you hadn’t truly failed until you gave up.  Well what happens and what do you do when you give up?  When you are miserable and crushed.  When it all feels hopeless and you are destroyed.  When you have no one to blame but yourself for your pain and you don’t just want to give up you actually do.  You turn your back on who you are and what you believe in because it was too hard.  You couldn’t do it any more.  You gave up and you truly and completely failed.  You failed yourself.  You failed the people you loved.  You failed people who depended on you.  You failed.  And you know it.  No one can tell you anything different because all their words do nothing but remind you of the most important part.  You gave up.  No matter what they say it doesn’t matter.  You have given up, you know you have, and you know that makes you a failure.  So now what?  What do I do as a complete and total failure?

I have options.  Move on and focus on other things.  Things where I am not a failure.  Things I care about.  I fill my time with other things that try to make me feel better or help me forget my failure.  But they don’t help.  Maybe some day your failure will be a distant memory and you can cover it up with newer things.  I doubt that though.  There are still stupid things from my childhood that I have to get past so I imagine something this major will plague me forever.  Maybe you are the same.  Maybe you can go to therapy and forget.  Maybe you can’t.

Maybe the option is to do something to dull the pain.  Something that makes you feel better.  It could be alcohol, marijuana, video games, women, men, porn, clubbing, dancing, dating, or anything that dulls the pain.  In the end though it comes back.  Your failure is still there staring you in the face.  You even give up your vice because when you do it you feel like you failed again.  Then you feel your original failure that much harder.  So you go back because at least there you have a moment of peace.  And so you ride the roller coaster.  You forget your failure then it runs you over again.  You are miserable but at least there are points where you don’t feel pain.

Maybe the option is to pretend it never happened.  You are working on yourself.  It wasn’t a failure.  You try to convince yourself that you didn’t give up.  It was a setback while you were working on yourself.  It was a stepping stone.  You lie to yourself.  And maybe you eventually lie to yourself enough to believe it.  But deep down you still know that you gave up.  You failed.  Someday it’ll haunt you.  Truth has a way of coming back.  You can lie for years and feel good for years.  Then one day there it is the truth of what happened.  Of all the options this feels the best.  Because for months and years you feel good.  The people around you cheer you on watching you work.  The outside and your mind all look and feel good.  But you are a ticking time bomb.  The truth will catch up to you.

The bible has stories in it of people who failed and handled it many different ways.  David in 2 Samuel 11&12 fails.  When he fails he pretends it never happens.  He covers it up.  Death followed.  Some would say but David was still in his failure.  I’m past mine.  There is no more going on, just pain.  I want to point something out in the story.  In chapter 12 David is confronted by the prophet of God and has no idea that he is the one being talked about.  David had plenty of time to move past his failure.  He had buried it in his past.  He was already where many wish they could be.  At the point where the pain was gone.  He had what he wanted.  He had the girl.  She was his wife.  David knew what he did in the last chapter and had felt the guilt of it.  He felt the failure of what he did, but he chose to pretend it didn’t happen and he moved on into what was enjoyable.  He loved the child he had with Bathsheba.  Why say that?  He mourned and prayed for it.  He was distraught.  Before Nathan shows up David has fully accepted his failure as a weak moment and moved into enjoying himself.  But the truth caught up to him.  It hurt him and the ones he loved.  He failed completely and totally.

Samson failed completely and totally.  In Judges chapter 16 is where we see the failure come to a head.  It started before that.  He gave up trying to act right.  He knew Delilah was tricking him.  We guys are dumb but you tell someone a secret two times and your mortal enemies know what you tell them and I can’t believe that he didn’t know she was his failure.  And when his pain and suffering came on him he had no choice but to live in it.  He was in prison, grinding grain for his enemy, blind, and mocked.  He was living in his failure.  At church they like to point out that the scripture points out his hair grew.  They act like his hair length was his super power.  We may never say it but we act like the hair gave him his strength.  We say things like even in prison God is there growing you and preparing you.  Even in the dark times God is working on you.  I offer a different perspective on this verse.  I offer the fact that Samson was so defeated and pitiful that the Philistines felt confident in leaving him that way.  Think about it.  He NEVER cut his hair.  Before Delilah he hadn’t.  Delilah called someone to shave his braids off.  And then once he was blind and in prison he couldn’t have if he wanted to.  Samson was so beat down and pathetic that his enemy didn’t think there was any need to keep cutting it.  And what did it give him?  Like David his failure gave him death.  For him it was in himself.  His strength returned not when his hair grew but when he cried out to God for one last act of revenge.  And it wasn’t for God or for God’s people.  It was for his eyes.  Samson failed completely.  Did God use him?  Yes.  Did it work out for Samson?  No.  Samson failed, he gave up, and for it he was given death.

So what do I do now?  I failed completely.  I gave up.  Like Samson I am sitting in prison grinding the days away.  Or like Samson I just want one more moment and then death to ease the pain.  I just want freedom from my pain.  I just want peace.  But that’s not being a man.  That’s being a boy.  A boy just wants out.  A boy just wants to move on to the next thing.  If I want to be a man I have to be like David.  I have to look at my failure and accept it.  I have to look at my failure and know that my actions are hurting other people.  Bathsheba may not have been innocent but her lover murdered her husband then got their son killed by God.  She was summoned and seduced by the king.  Not innocent but the measure of guilt laid with David.  She had to suffer for his sin.  David mourned and cried out.  He returned to his failure.  He faced the consequences and he sought after the one being in the universe with the ability to rewrite failure.

God made Samson’s failure mean something.  Samson failed but God got a victory.  David failed but God made the next king of Israel.  Solomon was the son of Bathsheba.  Jesus was a direct descendant of that failure.  God rewrites failure as victory and makes roses from ashes.  You may not believe in God and my heart goes out to you.  Because the only way a man can move through failure and truly go forward is to accept it.  Not pretending it didn’t happen, not covering it up with a vice of some kind, and not just by focusing on other things.  The only way to deal with failure as a man is to face it and accept it.  To make it part of your story.  Without a God who can make that miserable part of your story into a victory I don’t know how to face it.

I’ve tried to make this something that both Christian and non-Christian can read.  On this subject though I can’t imagine going through this without God.  As such I offer this to the readers.  You may be a failure.  But God still loves you.  You may not agree with the churches you’ve been to or read about.  You may have been hurt by people saying they were doing God’s work.  I ask though to reach out yourself.  Maybe you knew God and hate him for where you are now.  Reach out to him.  Don’t go through this without him.