The professor hands your tests back and you start to hear excited little exclamations from the people sitting next to you as they look at their grades. Hopeful, you unfold your test and see and nice red 60 staring up at you. The exclamations you make are not excited.
You and your team have fought as hard as you can to get to the playoffs. The game is neck and neck, but you are the one that slips up and costs your team the win. No one talks about it afterwards, but you know that the loss is on you.
You and your friends have always done everything together. But one day you look up and you realize that they're all in relationships now, and you are not. You crack some third-wheel jokes and pretend you're okay with not being in a relationship while couples cuddle on the couch on either side of you.
Failure comes in many different forms. Failing to get to the gym, failing to talk to that cute guy or girl you see every day, failing to open my Bible and complete your daily devotional, failing to get that job you worked so hard to apply for. When failure hits, it hits hard. You feel as if all of your studying, all of your practicing, all of your time and your effort have been for nothing. You feel like turning all your lights off, crawling into bed, rolling up into a human burrito, and avoiding the world for several days.
This disappointment in yourself only brings more negative thoughts with it:
"I'm not good enough."
"I can never win."
"Might as well stop trying."
Once you start having these thoughts, it's really hard to stop having them. This "failure mindset" takes you in and doesn't let go, and brings with it the idea that you haven't only disappointed yourself: you've disappointed others.
I think my biggest fear is disappointing the people in my life whose opinions I care about. Sometimes I am afraid of disappointing people who don't even know me. The belief that I've let other people down because of something I didn't do, or something I forgot about, or something I did wrong, sits on my chest and weighs me down like an anchor.
This fear of failure brings with it the paranoid lifestyle of perfectionism. Everything has to be just right. Nothing can go wrong. If something goes wrong, then I have failed, and that is a justifiable means for the world to come crashing down around me. However, I cannot show the people around me this cataclysmic ending of the world for fear of cracking the mask of perfectionism that I so often find myself wearing. The emotional breakdowns don't occur until the door has closed behind me.
No one can see that I have failed. No one must see behind this mask that I wear because if they do, then their disappointment in my lack of ability to survive as a well-functioning, capable, successful adult weighs me down until I can no longer stand.
Do the people in my life really become so disappointed in me because of a failed test?
Probably not.
Does the logic of the previous statement work its way into my head when I'm so caught up in my own failure?
No. No, it really doesn't.
This is the endless cycle that I subject myself to.
This negativity, this paranoia, sneaks through the cracks in my mind and exploits the thing that I fear the most, almost to the point where I get so tired of this never-ending cycle that I'm ready to throw in the towel and commit to failure every single day.
However, tipping the scale from one extreme to the other is not the way to solve this problem. The only way I can solve this problem is realizing that I can't do everything on my own. I can't. I can't rely on my own weak, distracted mind to carry me effortlessly through my days on this Earth.
I need to rest in the knowledge that God is so much more than capable of carrying me through this life. In fact, all He wants is for me to relinquish my grip on my life and to give Him the reins.
These thoughts of failure and disappointment do not come from my Jesus. These thoughts come from an Enemy who is much too clever for me to face on my own. While the Enemy may be strong, God is ten million times stronger.
I am NOT a failure because God has reached down and picked up my worn and weary soul. He has gently reminded me that because I am human, I will fail, but He given me with the strength, peace, and humility to accept my failures as they come. He has given me the resilience to push for and strive for victories, and He has given me the joy to celebrate those victories.
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” - John 16:33 (NIV)
