One More Comment on Failure

So I'm sort of stuck on this idea that failure, that rock bottom, might have been the answer all along.

I mean the worst possible most horrible thing in my parade of horribles came true. I'm single. I'm thirty-five and I'm single. Not to mention living in my younger brother's house and all that lot. It was my worst fear. It came true. Maybe there is something to that whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing. But that isn't the point now, is it?

Then what is the point? That I'm still alive...sort of. But I didn't think I would literally die if I didn't get married in my twenties. I just thought it would be humiliating and horrible and really really scary and awful. At times it does feel like those things are true - that I am humiliated and things are horrible and scary and awful. Most of the times, it doesn't.

So then surviving it isn't the point.

It's more than just surviving it. What this really means to me is that my worst fear can come true and maybe my worst fear isn't nearly as terrible as I thought. Which means that all of my fears about failing things are pretty much useless. What is there to fear when the worst thing you think can happens actually happens? There really isn't anything more to be afraid of.

Now that is a thought to hold onto for a moment. Think about it. Maybe your worst fear is different than mine. Maybe you think my worst fear is silly. Maybe, though, really, all "worst fears" are just that. They are silly.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think there is anything silly about devastating loss, disease and loneliness. They are horrible.

But they happen and sometimes, when they do happen, you discover that fearing it didn't matter in the end. And perhaps that is God's way of showing us that fear cannot harm us.

I know what I would have said to this a year or two ago. I wouldn't have known, though, what rock bottom looked like. Instead I would have seen being single at thirty-whatever as a curse. I would have seen it as a sign of my unworthiness, my ugliness, my fatness. Or whatever else I could come up with. I didn't see that really all of that was only my own insecurities about me. I'm not saying I'm single because I'm insecure. I am saying that my insecurities were manifest rather loudly because I had to find a reason for being single and for feeling rejected.

I wouldn't have seen rock bottom as a blessing. How odd. How completely and totally odd and unexpected and, even more strange, how beautiful. I feel so safe now. I feel so safe because I know the worst that can happen. It isn't what I thought it was. It isn't because I'm not good enough. It isn't because God has forgotten who I am. It is exactly the opposite. It is because I can do hard things, and God does know me. Personally. He knows me enough to give me what I thought would devastate and destroy me and show me that I am more.

I know some things about myself that I would never have known. I know now that fear is nothing. It is nothing and it means nothing. It's only a tool of an adversary who thinks he can take us down by feeding a fear. It makes Job mean so much more to me now. There was a guy who got it. He didn't give in to the fear. He let all those things, all those horribles, pass over him. He accepted it. He knew that God was on his side. So what else really mattered in the end.

Now I know that the worst can come true. And it isn't so bad. So I can go on living.