The past two weeks have brought me two very different feelings. First was two weeks ago when I ran my marathon. I was just hoping to finish without stopping and have a good race seeing as it was the most difficult marathon I had attempted and also being that it was my last marathon for a year. Usually marathoners cannot sleep the night before their races. I sleep just fine. However, the night before this race I was plagued with a dream foreshadowing misfortune throughout my race. First, my shoes fell off in the race and I was not able to find them. So I just kept running. Then somewhere along the course, my sister-in-law ran up next to me and pushed the running stroller with my niece in it into my hands. There I was barefoot and pushing a baby stroller up the steep hills of the San Francisco Marathon. Gosh! What a terrible race! I woke up from this dream, more like nightmare, and threw my clothes and running shoes on and did my best to focus my mind on my way to the city. Surprisingly, the dream I had did not predestine how my race would be. I had my best time, despite the fact that there were so many hills. I crossed the finish line with a huge sense of accomplishment and success.
Here I am two weeks later, feeling something a bit different than success and accomplishment, failure. A few days after my marathon I took my final test to complete my teaching credential. I got the results today. Reading the words, Passing Status: Did Not Pass, stung me in my chest. Knowing the test was several hours long and especially knowing that I was two points, yes, TWO POINTS, away from a passing score made it worse. I immediately wanted to do what I do best, have a pity party. Knowing human nature, I find that I oftentimes feel as though my worth is in other things such as whether or not people like me, how intellectual I am, or how successful in life I am becoming. When I put my worth in other things, I forget one important fact. Whether I succeed or fail in life, I am worth something not because of things but because Christ placed worth on my life when he died for me. So I now sit here and look at my failure as an opportunity to better myself and grow. I realize if I succeeded at everything I attempted, I wouldn’t really learn a whole lot. However, I can use this failure to grow and accomplish something. Most importantly, I remember my worth is not determined by a passing score on a test, or even crossing a marathon finish line. My worth was determined a long time ago with some rusty nails on a hill in the Middle East and a man laying down on a cross, thinking I was worth his life.
