Defining Success.

These last few weeks have been a roller coaster, emotionally and spiritually. I laughed out loud when, in the midst of a meltdown, I read my own words from January about wanting God to shake my life up. Well, shake it up He has. And, I can confidently say, praise Him for it!

I learned something big this week. It is a game changer. A lightbulb. An epiphany.

I won’t say it is profound—I’m sure I’m not the first one to come up with it. In fact, I know I’m not. But it certainly is having a profound impact on my simple little life.

Here’s the deal.

For a long time, I have had two definitions of success:
1)   Be married with lots of babies.
2)   Have a (very bohemian theatre major version of a) career job.

In short, my definition of success was to have life together. If you had asked me to define success, these are not the answers I would have given you, but upon much reflection and sorting things out, it is obvious this is how my mind was subconsciously working.

I wasn’t necessarily gunning for both of those things to happen for me, but I definitely needed one or the other to be true in order to feel I had succeeded at life. I would have been content to marry a cute boy and raise a family with him, and I would have been equally content to have a fabulous non-profit, creative, exciting artsy job that would make everyone around me ooooh and ahhhh.

In the last year, both of those life goals looked like they were beginning to unfold. I approached one with reckless abandon, and the other with much trepidation and a lot of baggage. As it became clear that one goal was not going to pan out the way I wanted it to, I began to cling all the more fiercely to the other. And then, quite suddenly, I was left empty handed. Both of my avenues for success were shut down. 

You can imagine the frustration, hurt and confusion my prideful, competitive heart was feeling. I was angry. But more than angry, I was heartbroken. In fact, it is safe to say the heartbreak was masked by the anger. I was sad, lonely, and hurt, feeling like a failure because I felt those things, and my reaction was to get mad about it. Geez, emotions are a vicious cycle.

Throughout all of this roller coaster, I kept crying out to God. Why, oh why, was He letting me feel this way? There was nowhere to run from the problem I was facing, it was literally in front of my face daily. Every confrontation dissolved me to tears. I hated feeling out of control and weak. I couldn’t fix the mess I found myself in. That, to me, was the pinnacle of failure.

It was in the middle of all that mess I realized how I had been defining success, and how that was feeding into my panic. So, mentally, I got to a point of recognizing that defining success by my marital or job status was probably wrong. And success wasn’t a lack of emotion and being a stone cold fox all the time, because that is totally unrealistic. But I still didn’t know what success was.

But then, oh but then, after many tears and many prayers and much wrestling, the question was answered. It came like a whisper, and stilled my soul.

Success is not the absence of fear or weakness. Rather, success is leaning hard into the unfailing power and love of Christ in the face of failure and weakness.

Each moment of struggle, the daily doubts and fears, are, every one of them, opportunities for me to cry out to the Lord and for Him to answer. It is not my job to fix anything. It is not my job to have an Instagram-perfect life. My success is measured in how readily and how fully I turn to Jesus in the midst of trouble and say “Help me!”

And help me He will.

So if I have learned anything, it is that I have been successful indeed. Successful in hitting rock bottom, and admitting it, and begging for grace. Which, of course, I am swiftly granted. Because that is how God works. His power is most evident when I am in my weakest moment.

___________________

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."