Too afraid to fail

"And now, baby, I walk alone, and I am lost".
Rhythm of the Blues - Mary Chapin Carpenter.

"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall".  Proverbs 16:18.

If there's one thing that I can honestly say about my own spirituality, it's that I so often find myself running on empty.

Prayer is hard, scripture seems to be talking about a never, never land, and my own thoughts, feelings and deeds would look completely in place amidst the desolation of a first world war battleground.

The good news is... That's all OK.
Every morning, I can continue to live because what really matters is a mercy and righteousness that isn't my own, gifted to me at the cross and the empty tomb.
Like the sunrise, that mercy is so beyond me, but it makes me, renews me anyway.

It also allows me to look outward, to the madness and the astonishing pain and beauty around us.

That teaches me.
Trying to find validity anywhere else is truly a lost cause.
We may think we're good, but unless God's love is what is clothing you, we're actually dining on ashes.

Today, I found myself reading the story of someone whose life has, professionally, crashed and burned. Once Pastor of a mega church and writer of best-selling books, he publicly announced that his faith, his marriage, his life that was, is all gone. He's clearly currently finding mercy in the care of others as he steps into the honest reality he's now faced, but as I listened to his story, I couldn't help wondering how often people fall in this way because there wasn't a recognition that failure is often an essential, vital part of becoming truly what matters.

It's easy to shoot holes into this tragic story, but who, when God walks close, isn't in the kind of mess that makes us 'duck and cover' rather than face such naked, untarnished beauty?
How many of us rustle up all kinds of pretenses to disguise just how wretched we've become?
As we crawl around, scrabbling for our petty excuses for what we are, He is the one who has already prepared to clothe our poverty.

When that beauty feeds us, we eat a wholeness that gives us dignity and health, but it's so easy for us to allow pride to spoil us.

Jesus says that when we're weary, when we have had enough of carrying the folly of our self-absorption, we can find ease in His holding us, in knowing the sure wealth of the care that is found beyond us.

As I grow older, it gets a little easier to see just how crazy I've been in so many ways, usually because I'm so busy tripping over myself I miss what counts. The good news is that, in spite of that, He holds us, keeps us, heals us because of His love alone.

Tomorrow, no doubt, I'll be me again.
Mercy, however, will be there, kissing the world again,
so it will all be worthwhile.
I just need to allow His sweet, saving grace to hold me.