FAILED

Sometimes I just want to give up. I actually struggle with this feeling often. My natural self wants things to happen around me with little or no effort. I want to see quick results. I want to live with success as my witness, but all too often it is my failure that highlights my life. For example, I have been studying to get my broker license for quite some time now. My husband wants me to join him in his business and be in his office with him selling real estate and helping him with his many other property management jobs. So two years ago I started studying. Now this is a very long time to study for real estate. Most people think that I started this one year ago, or even just six months ago, But no. I've been studying hard for two years now! The first year was a complete flop. With my struggles with MS, my brain does not retain information correctly... or really even at all. So the first year I spent reading the entire real estate book highlighting every word that I felt I should remember, but obviously couldn't. Then with my Stem Cell Therapy my brain seemed to recover. This past year has been spent more with feelings of accomplishment rather than the many tear filled study sessions of the previous year. But now it's crunch time. There are two parts to the exams. I passed the State portion, but have taken the National portion two times now with FAILED written across the page. I spend my days in my office with my door closed staring at my computer taking tests from 9am till I pick the boys up at 3:30. I study hard and FAILED is my result! FAILED is the text I must send out to others who know I am taking my test. FAILED is my results of my hard work. FAILED is what I see. FAILED FAILED FAILED

Joseph has been my reading since my last FAILED attempt. A boy with a dream. A dream that caused his brothers to despise him even more (Genesis 37). As I have been reading these past ten chapters through Genesis following Joseph's life of FAILED attempts I am encouraged to see the bigger picture, but in order to see it I cannot stop with chapter 38, or even 46. I must keep reading so that I can understand better the bigger picture and that does not come chapters later, but many books and many lives later. This is a very big picture that we are all a part of and if I can keep my eyes upon the bigger picture, then my life does not seem quite so overwhelming. The test in front of me is just another day that I cannot give up upon. The test in front of me is just another example that I must live out in front of my children, in front of my little world. In chapter 45 Joseph starts to console his very distraught brothers who feel they have just witnessed their upcoming execution. 

“I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt. But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives. This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last five more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors. So it was God who sent me here, not you! And He is the one who made me an adviser to Pharaoh—the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt."

The hardest part of being me is the fact that I tell everyone everything about myself. It is so hard because I have to live out my life knowing full well that EVERYONE knows what I am doing. But this is the part that also helps me to keep going. I cannot fool myself into giving up and live with the thought that "no one will know anyways." Because even if no one else knows, my boys know and they are watching the example that I am living out in front of them. They are learning from me how to either give up or get up. I want them to be men of honor, men of integrity. So I must keep going! They are part of my bigger picture. How I affect their lives now for the future men they are to become rests on me never allowing FAILED to over power my life now. 

Joseph is part of a bigger picture that leads us directly to the Christ. And His story is part of my bigger story through my boys. This life and what we are each going through really is not about just the test that is set in front of us now. We are each a part of a bigger story that affects our lives for generations to come. Books, chapters, pages that are being written as we live out our FAILED attempt and our accomplishments. But all too often those most important chapters are those that seem to highlight the FAILED adventures that teach us and others to keep going and to never give up. What is our dream? What is it that seems too big  for us to maneuver that is upon us now? Can we see past the test in front of us so that we can focus on the bigger picture we are a part of? Test number three is upon me in less than 2 weeks. May I live out my life in front of my boys so that they may push through their own FAILED attempts and become mighty men of God in the final chapter of their children's lives. For really this test is not too big for me to give up that easily now is it.

Every day Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest