Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

A Spiritual Late Bloomer, I Learn from Failure in my Messy Beautiful Life

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happy_childWhen my daughter Zoe was born, twenty-one years ago, frazzled between nursing, and impractical plans of still writing, I made a mental prayer list to pray through as I pushed her stroller round our neighbourhood.

And blush: All those items are still on my prayer list.

1 Losing Weight. I still have 12 pounds more to lose of the 20 pounds I gained when pregnant with Zoe. Another pregnancy, with Irene, didn’t help, though that weight I have lost!

2 Running an orderly house. Well, we are now doing so,  though, alas, there’s still clutter. I am doing the hopeful 365 Less Things project—a concrete way of getting rid of things by shedding one thing a day–and am hopeful that I will eventually have nothing in my house that is not both beautiful and useful.

3 I wanted to wake up at 5 a.m. because I have romantic associations with 5 a.m., and am still trying! I now go to bed around 9.35 p.m. so waking earlier will gradually becoming easier

4 I wanted to write a big beautiful book—and I still do!! And though I now write pretty much every day, having so organised my life that I feel sad and uncomfortable on the days that I don’t write : that book, ah!—I work on it in fits and starts.

Ouch! Same goals, 21 years later.

* * *

That’s what life is like for an ordinary Christian.

Oswald Chambers (of My Utmost for His Highest), aged 27; Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Bill Wilson, Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, absolutely surrendered themselves to God, once and for all.

Jack Miller made fun of Samuel Johnson’s continual efforts to wake early, saying that that was because Dr. Johnson had not learnt to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Priscilla Shirer writes that a failed diet is “a direct sign that we have not submitted ourselves completely to the Lord.”

Yup, that’s me. Just learning how to lean on the Holy Spirit. I have surrendered myself to Jesus, but then indiscipline gets the better of me, or grumpiness, or laziness, or… most of the deadly seven!

* * *

However, there are many ways of being a Christian, many concentric circles of discipleship. There is John, the beloved disciple who leans on Jesus during the Last Supper, hearing all the secrets of the universe.

There are Peter, James and John whom Jesus took with him at the Mount of Transfiguration, when they saw his glory, and at Gethsemane, when he wanted moral support. Then there were the twelve apostles, the seventy-two, the hundred and twenty, the five hundred and, of course, the 5000 men, in addition to women and children, who listened spellbound to the Sermon on the Mount.

It is possible to walk through the Sinai desert in ten days, I’ve read. It took the Israelites forty years, as they wandered in circles, grumbling, dispirited, losing their bearings. They are ordinary believers. They are our grandfathers and grandmothers in the faith.

* * *

Wandering in circles: That’s true of things people struggle with for forty years.

One could get one’s house decluttered and organised in six months Marie Kondo says; 9 months according to Joshua Becker. Many struggle with this for decades, all their lives.

Most people could lose their surplus weight in a year through healthy eating and exercise. I could do so myself! Yet, many battle with this for decades, or for all their lives.

One could write a book in a couple of years, at 250 words a day. But many…the blushing, flushing woman you see is me!

Mark Batterson writes in his brilliant book, The Circle-Maker, that the biggest factor in spiritual and occupational success is waking early. We all know it’s better to be awake from 6-8 a.m. than from 10 to 12 p.m. Yet, many struggle with staying up too late, and sleeping in too late all their lives. And I am still grasping at 5 a.m.

* * *

There! I now feel thoroughly downcast over issues I have battled with for two decades when perhaps I could have had them sorted in a year.

What beauty could there be in this mess? What gold among the shards?

1) It’s given me patience, compassion and understanding of my own and other people’s struggles.

Two steps forward, 1.9 backwards is progress. Slow, but definite.

It’s made me realistic about how  hard it can be to follow Jesus. And he was realistic about it. Think about his metaphor. Carry your cross and follow him. Walk the narrow path into life.

We are not all fire like Beth Moore or Billy Graham who go for Christ, 100 %, though I’d like to be!

Some of us have feeble arms and weak knees.  But we are still in the fight.

2) I have learned the limits of my will, my resolve. Trying to do life on my own and failing has taught me that I need Jesus. It has taught me that it is hard for me to accomplish my goals without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Becoming a Christian for me was, initially, and for many years, an intellectual decision. I was—and am!!—convinced that Jesus was God, and the Bible inspired, and reorganised my life accordingly. Sweeping changes: tithing, prayer, Bible study, church attendance, trying to obey what Jesus taught, implementing the wisdom of Proverbs in my life, that sort of thing.

The true magic of being a Christian is now rose-tinting everything, like sunrise. I am moving from grammar to poetry, from chords to the symphony.  The magic: That I can ask Jesus to change my heart. To make me love vegetables. To love to walk and run. To love to sleep early and wake early. To love order. To love the discipline it takes to write.

3) We value virtue through experiencing the opposite.  The beauty of domestic order through knowing chaos. The endorphin glow after a run through knowing the misery of physical sluggishness. The joy of writing through knowing the misery of not creating.

4) My failures have given me an increased awareness of the love of God. I have had successes. I opened a letter saying I had been admitted to Oxford University to read English. Opened a letter saying that I had won $20, 000 from the National Endowment for the Arts for my writing!

But I am most conscious of the love of God when I lean into it in failure and low spirits and realise that he loves me anyway. Who knows, perhaps he loves me more fiercely because of my failures and weaknesses, as we fiercely love our toddlers, puppies and old dogs!

5) I note that I have partially failed in all those goals I had as a woozy young mum, pushing my stroller around the neighbourhood, and wryly smile.

Because failure has lost its sting for me. Honestly! My failures make me wryly smile.

Because they are not final.

They are a way of learning. Who I am. What works for me. What does not work. How to pick myself up and go on after “failure.”

I have rarely stumbled on something which has worked for me at the first attempt. It takes trial and error.

And failure has taught me to answer a question of the catechism: Where is God?

God is not over there somewhere, experienced by the perfect and prayerful and good, but right here, in middle of failures; food instead of prayer; newspapers instead of writing; coat dropped on the living room floor; hello, snooze button.

God is not only encountered in prayer and Bible study. He appears, like the beneficent beings of fairy tale, when I most need him. In the trenches of struggle.

* * *

 Yes, taking a lick at a dragon, desultory sword thrust by sword thrust, instead of cutting off his head as I might have done were I St. George or a better girl has taught me many things.

Humility for I am not as A type as I imagine. Mercy with others who struggle. The importance of persisting and continuing looking for solutions.

I see the road out of the messy beautiful desert, and I walk down its zigzag paving stones, less conceited than had I achieved my goals quickly; with more to teach, perhaps; with more inspiration to offer such as I who wander in circles until they find the straight path, but finally leave the desert, radiant, leaning on their beloved.

Carry on, Warrior.

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Comments

  1. I re-read this this morning and offer the following. The Universe, whether we approve or not, tends to disorder. Bicycles rust and dishwashers don’t spontaneously return their contents to the shelves. There is too much waste. Energy finds ways of escape from the ordered places into which we attempt to corral it. This is the nature of things. But, the Creator speaks and, without effort, order is restored. Not, sometimes our view of it, where things and people are where we think they ought to be, but a deeper, more secure Order, where the jangling emotional DNA stops resonating, just long enough for the Small Voice to be heard.

    • “But the Creator speaks and, without effort, order is restored. A deeper, more secure Order, where the jangling emotional DNA stops resonating, just long enough for the Small Voice to be heard.”

      How lovely. This happens for me, in prayer. 2 months ago, we returned from a holiday in Paris and the Loire Valley to find our car stolen, and the house ransacked–TV, laptops, iPods, Wii etc stolen. The worst was the mess (aggravated by the fact that we weren’t adequately insured, details overlooked!)

      I was shattered for about a week, just at the thought of restoring my ravaged house, then got up early one morning to pray, and sort of sensed the winds of the spirit blow through the house, restoring things in a deeper sense. I thought of Holy Saturday, oddly, when everything seemed lost, a failure, futile, wrapped in all-encompassing sadness–and yet, the power of God was going to bring about something more wondrous than they could ever have imagined. Nothing is as it seems.

      My own life has sloughs and troughs–I am in one now ever since I returned from Cambodia 3 weeks ago. Low energy, waiting for direction, waiting to see what God may do, or lead me to do. And these in-the-womb slumps are always the precursor of new birth and new life and new energy if I seek Him in them.

  2. Your journey of faith and failure seems to duplicate my own. I have been a Christian for over forty years and still find myself drifting as the Israelites did, always seeking the Promised Land. I daily get up by 6:30 – 7 AM feeling the need for spiritual food yet finding the demands of my household consume me and kill my appetite for God’s Word. I am always refreshed by your observations on life and how to deal with the distractions of life that would choke God’s Word. Walking by faith, not by sight, is the only way to grow and allow the Lord to work in the midst of our complicated and confused world.

    • Hi Kathy,
      When I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, a professor said, the dishes can wait, the poetry can’t. Which was true, in a way. When I became really serious about pursuing Christ, in late 1996, I used to say something like that to myself, “The dishes can wait, but I will not make the invisible lover of my soul wait.” It led, of course, to dreadful housekeeping in the short run, but I think putting Jesus first saved my sanity and happiness in many, many ways.
      I used to study scripture seriously, every day, for years and years. Now, as a Christian blogger, my challenge is not to allow writing about Scripture to take the place of “eating” it–reading and meditating on it!!

  3. Thank God for grace and mercy! We not only get to receive God’s forgiveness, but we also get to forgive others for seeing us through the eyes of perfectionism. I especially need to forgive Christian authors who say things like ‘a failed diet is “a direct sign that we have not submitted ourselves completely to the Lord.”’ Well, yes of course, but has anyone other than Jesus ever submitted himself *completely* to the Lord? Only the Pharisees considered themselves to have done that, but how impoverished they were to have missed out entirely on the gift of mercy! Oh, by the way, dark chocolate has health benefits! That’s what I tell myself.

    • Dark chocolate does have health benefits, and I do have some therapeutically. (A little bit of high quality dark kills the craving for chocolate, which has been my go-to emotion-numb-er for decades, alas).
      I think like Peter I just need to keep my eyes on Jesus when I feel discouraged about the slowness of my “Pilgrim’s Progress.” When I feel conscious of his love, other things eventually sort of melt away!

    • Quite honestly, any Christian who can seriously write in a book, or publish a book containing that sentence equating a failed diet with ‘not being completely submitted to the Lord’ is on the wrong road. Excuse me, but how does this relate to what the Gospel is about, and what our relation to the Lord is about? Really about? Can we point to Scripture and find such thoughts? That book needs to be ignored! And maybe ‘submission’ to Christ isn’t the only, or the main, response He wants? (Yes, maybe that sounds like ‘having a go’ at the writer of the book, but I find it a bit shocking, though of course, I mayn’t have done if I read it in context… It’s true that God is interested in all the details of our lives, but it is also surely true that His attitude is not going to be ‘submit to me! Totally! Submit!’

  5. ‘God has not finished with me yet’ someone said….? Well, He never does, does He? That’s the point! 🙂 HAve a great Easter (sad we can’t forget what happened after Good Friday, once we know the story… so we have to try and pretend Easter is a surprise!)

    • Thanks for visiting, Mari, and have a happy Easter too. I am looking forward to it!

  6. My saying through the years, yes, I have had years, too, of this kind of struggle, is “strength for the day, joy in the journey.” Or as a poster says, “God’s not finished with me yet.” We must pick up our cross daily. Jesus is with us all the way.

    • “joy in the journey,” indeed. I think it’s going to come down to fixing my eyes on Jesus!

  7. Thank you for this. Spiritual lives are so much like the Israelites not understanding for forty years that manna was more than good, it was a dependence that we all struggle with. Thank you for honoring your own humanity and each of us, together in the wilderness.

    • Melody, thank you, and how nice to connect here. I know we’re friends on FB and Twitter!
      Yup, at times spiritual progress feels like 40 years in the wilderness–but with clouds of fire, quail and manna—and Jesus himself, sometimes glimpsed, but always beside us!

  8. I, too, love the honesty in your writings. Today, it reminded me that I also have had the same goals/struggles for 20 or so years! It makes me smile now, as it does you. I’ve learned to keep chugging along. Sometimes I run in the ditch and like to stay there for a little while, but then I get myself out and renew my spirit, (actually, it’s God that renews my spirit!) and move on.
    Leaning on Jesus and struggling with my own will is a problem for me. I’ve gotten a lot better though. Sometimes that ice cream has become such a support I can hardly refuse.
    I see you mention Beth Moore today. She is a wonderful woman of God. In a previous blog, you mentioned Joyce Meyer and that you had not heard her before. I hope you will listen to her soon. She has helped me greatly to be where I am today.

    • Thanks, Janet, and welcome to my blog. I think we’ve connected on FB before. Yes, I love Beth Moore; I have led several of her studies. My younger daughter loves Joyce Meyer–and perhaps I will read a book of hers next.
      Thanks much for visiting!

  9. Thank you, thank you , thank you. Your post was exactly what I needed to read as I struggled with not being good enough, getting it wrong, not being a Beni Johnson. It’s OK just to be me, with things on my list have been there for decades too. I thank God for your honesty and your ability to write with an authentic voice. May you continue to be greatly blessed as you bless others. Warmest regards, Gill

    • Thank you, Gill for your encouragement, which, as it happens, is what I needed this morning 🙂