2 years ago I wrote a blog about how my life had fallen short of what society (and myself) deemed successful (if you haven’t read my OG blog check it out HERE). So much has happened between then and now. I feel like the person that I was then, would be really proud of the person that she was going to become, but here is the thing: I still struggle with seeing myself as a failure, it just looks a little different today than it did back then.
Guys- its so frustrating to feel stuck to this. Heres the thing that I’ve been realizing lately: over the past few years I never stopped feeling like a failure, I just changed my measure of success. Where as before I was comparing myself to the standards of the world, now I’ve fallen into comparing my relationship with God to other’s relationship with Him.
I have been so incredibly blessed to be in community with people who have been walking with the Lord much longer than I have and who live in a level of intimacy with the Lord that I hope to have one day. I have gotten to learn so much from them and I know that during these past few years I have been able to grow into deeper intimacy with the Lord and in spiritual maturity- but a part of me still says ‘yea but look at them’.
And just like that I’m back to being in that place of feeling like I’m coming up short. Where I see people walking out patience, I am quick to get frustrated and angry. Where I see others boldly sharing the Gospel and walking in faith, I am still doubting and hanging back. Like what the heck Morgan!?
It’s hard to feel stuck, and it’s a little disheartening if I’m being honest, but I am reminded of an analogy that I heard from a wise friend: Our walk through sin sometimes looks like a shell:
God is our center and we spend our whole lives trying to get closer and closer to Him. While we’re trying to get closer to Him, we encounter sin roadblocks. Through prayer, trusting God, and discipline (among other things), we can break through and break free of sin in our life (to an extent- I mean we’ll never be perfect…), and move closer to God. Sometimes down the road, after we have made so much progress, certain sins will pop back up. I can tell you that it feels a lot like going back to the beginning, but really, we’ve just moved deeper, we’re attacking more of the heart and root of the sin than we were before.
As I see myself struggling with feeling like a failure again (this time feeling like a failure for not being where I could be spiritually), I can see that the heart of me feeling this way is the same as it was before, my community is just a whole lot more churched now than it was. I’ve gotten so caught up with comparing myself to others that it’s keeping me from being satisfied in where the Lord has me right now. In fact, I am finding my value/worth in what other people think of me/my life as opposed to the value and worth that God sets for me.
2 years ago I looked around at other people who were going to better colleges, getting better jobs, moving into apartments, and getting engaged (basically just adulting better than me), and now I look around and I see people hearing from the Lord regularly, overflowing with fruit of the Spirit, and basically just living out their faith so so so much better than I am.
Did you catch it? I can’t stop looking at what other people are doing. I’m focused on others and not on God or what He wants for me or who He says that I am. That’s the heart (or at least closer to the heart) of why I struggle with feeling like a failure.
Another one of my incredibly wise friends likes to use this analogy:
Sin is like an invasive tree planted in the forest of your life. You can see the leaves and maybe even some of the branches and the trunk, but you don’t see the roots (at least not right away). The leaves are the actions that you do, the branches are the mindset that shoots off of an outlook on life (the trunk), and the roots are truths that we believe that oppose scripture.
If all I ever do to attack sin in my life is cut off some branches or leaves, it’s just going to grow right back. If I chop down the tree, but don’t dig up the roots, those roots are going to keep growing and the sin that I thought I got rid of is just going to keep cropping up in my life in different ways. Maybe the leaves will look different, but the roots are the same.
Feeling like a failure is just a part of a bigger tree of sin in my life. Before I didn’t even know that there was anything more going on, now I can see that me feeling like a failure has bigger implications, its a symptom of an area of my life where my thinking is misaligned with scripture.
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist, who specializes in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology (BASICALLY she studies the brain, mental health, and memory formation), but the coolest thing about her is that She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. The reason I bring her up is that she has a theory that says (in plain-man’s words):
“the way that you think is actually going to change the way that your brain functions… So if you think you are not going to make it, well, you are not going to make it. But if you think you are going to make it, you are going to make it. So the way you think will drive your brain.”
All that to say is that when you focus on something and you become aware of a thought process in your mind, you have power over it to change it. Before I didn’t have power over the ‘why’ of why I struggled to feel like a failure. Now, I have the power to impact change within myself because I know that there is something within me that I need to change.
To take Dr. Leaf’s theory a step further, I have the Holy Spirit within me who empowers me to make that change. If the Lord created the human mind with the ability to change itself, how much more is possible with the help of the Holy Spirit?
This is where I find myself now: Needing to turn back to God and what He says is true about me.
He says that I will never be perfect this side of heaven (Romans 3:23), but He also says despite that, I’m still worth it to Him (Romans 5:8). He promises to be with me (Joshua 1:5), He promises to be my strength when I am weak (2 Corinthians 12:10), He promises that He will work on my behalf when I life for Him (Romans 8:28).
I’m sure this won’t be the last time I have to deal with feelings of failure, but I know that the next time I do, I will be even closer to the root of this feeling in my heart, and more importantly, I will be closer to the truth that is found in Jesus. He has grace for me more than I have for myself.
Much Love,
Morgan
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