Failures

Several months ago, I attended a dynamic workshop for career women, facilitated by a female psychologist. All the workshop participants had to do an exercise in which we checked off a list of things that we had failed at doing. The "failures" among this group of highly successful women were numerous: failed classes and failed relationships; failed bar exams and failed businesses; failed comprehensive exams and failed dissertation defenses. And yet, an outsider considering this group of women gathered would have considered each one a "success" story, all currently excelling in their careers as lawyers, doctors, professors, wives, mothers, and various other roles.

That exercise has stayed with me for months, as I reflected on the facilitator's powerful words: "successful women are those who have not allowed their failures to define them." She continued in her assessment by reminding us that successful people fall down, as everyone does, but they get back up again and again. And while this was a secular workshop, I left humming the words to gospel singer Donnie McClurken's song: "we fall down/but we get up/for a saint is just a sinner who fell down/and got up."

As encouraged as I was by this workshop, I know myself to be a person who is haunted by her failures and who does not let go of them easily. I have failed at many things; important things. And sometimes people I love have failed me; important people. And while I have "gotten up" after all these moments, I struggle with not judging myself solely by these failures.

But a real moment of healing took place in my life when I stopped feeling afraid to fail. Each failure has been a learning experience, a building block in my life. Each failure has led to a new discovery about myself and about others. I've learned about real friendship, real loyalty, and real trust only because of failed friendships and failed loyalty and failed trust. And even in those dark moments, when my very faith has failed, God has always and abundantly brought me to a greater level of spiritual intimacy. So I'm learning not to fear the failures, which are simply inevitable. I am learning, each day, to focus not only on the number of times I've fallen down, but to celebrate those occasions in which I've gotten up, again and again.

Easter

I join with billions of Christians across the globe in a profound celebration of the Risen Christ. It is in this miracle that I find my hope, my confidence, and my very life. My whole being worships with an utter certainty in remembrance of the cross, the grave, and the empty tomb. On Good Friday, I sat with death. On Silent Saturday, I mourned the sacrifice. Today, Easter Sunday, I rejoice in resurrection.

Yet, as I close my Lenten reflections and embrace Easter, I pause to think about all those things that are dead or dormant within me. What dreams have I allowed to die, because they seem impossible? What hopes lie dormant, because achieving them seems improbable? What are the dead things, or the dying things, in all our lives that need to be resurrected or resuscitated?

While the Lenten journey ends, let a new spring season begin...one in which we dare to do the impossible and achieve the improbable. Let us embrace a theology of abundance, instead of religion of scarcity. Because is not this the very message of the cross? Salvation and freedom, in abundance; sacrificial and unconditional love, in abundance; death defeated and eternal life, in abundance.

My prayer is for all those hopes and dreams that have died an early death, or for all those hopes and dreams that have been killed with harsh words and lack of support...let them arise anew in you. Risen, indeed.