Ordinary - Failure Is Your Friend... no really.

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Success ended for me when I started school.  Up until then I had been surrounded by folks that put up with my, shall we say eccentricities because they loved me.  Having left the protective cocoon of home and family I ran smack into failure.   Little did I know that failure was to be my unwanted companion for a long time.  

As an ADHD child, before anyone knew what that was, the school years were more than a little tough for me.  I got my first, but not last, spanking within days of the start of Kindergarten.  I flunked (that was the word they used then) the 2nd grade.  2nd grade was also when my  teacher publicly called me out in front of the whole class and verbally dressed me down.  By 3rd grade I was in Special Education.  In 4th grade my parents moved me to another school district but I couldn't read very well and I couldn't spell at all.  More importantly the embarrassment and humiliation of all the failures left me more concerned with protecting myself emotionally than almost anything else including school.  I was pretty much the poster child for trouble.  I think my 3rd grade teacher summed it up best at the conclusion of the last parents conference... Craig is never going to set the world on fire.  Yep, that's me.  By the 3rd grade the world had decided I was failure. 

I'll spare you the long list of other failures that would dog my path because the details are not  important.  Truth is everyone has a story of failure, struggle and brokenness.  We carry these stories around inside us because like it or not,  they have become a part of who we are.  We also have scars from our past failures that somehow reach out and trouble us today.   Over the years I've learned far more than I ever wanted to know about dealing with failure. 

Probably the most important thing I've learned about failure and trust me I'm a bona fide  expert, is this.  Failure is your friend.  I know this seems crazy and it's certainly counter to the messages of our society but I'm not someone who is unacquainted with failure offering you a tired platitude.  

For us Ordinary people God has an extraordinary message.  It is found in Romans 8, which is a chapter of the Bible written just for those of us that are overly familiar with failure.  I don't have space for to talk about the whole chapter so read it for yourself but let me hit one really important thing.  
  
Verse 28 "... we know that in all things God works for the good..."  Notice it doesn't say all things are good. (that would be silly)  It says that in those bad things God works to bring good outcomes.   In other words God takes failure, brokenness even sin and brings good, positive life affirming stuff out of it.  I've experienced this personally.  

I've discovered over and over that God uses all the brokenness and failure of my childhood and adolescence not only to bless others but to form me into the person He wants me to be.  I don't think God did those things to me but I love that I serve a God that takes even my greatest failures and transforms them into good stuff.  The bottom line is that God uses our failures to make us more like him and as a bonus uses them to bless others. (double whammy)  

The key for me was letting God have those failures.   I had to own them, stop being embarrassed about them and put them in God's hands to use as he pleased knowing he thought no less of me because of them.  When I finally did that I was able to start sharing my story and it was then that I saw God bring so much good to others who were grappling with their own failure.   -- Strange, now when I tell my story of failure, struggle and defeat I find myself thinking, Hello Old Friend.   I'm so glad you are in my life.  NEVER want to go there again but without you I would not be half the person I am today.   -- Yep, failure is my friend, how about you?