failure

Well, this has been a fun week for me (ahem…).  Nothing like walking down your failure memory lane.  But each post has opened the door to talk to people who have worn a similar failure shamefully for years.  The walking wounded.  Bearing the scars of loss under a smile.  I hope sharing my own story has provided those of you with similar struggles with some freedom.

We covered rejection – I had my fair share in law school.

Then I walked through career loss – when I lost a job I needed.

Today I’m going to share something on the personal side – a failed relationship.

I hope you have not had to walk through painful heartache, but odds are many of you have.  I have never written about this part of my history before, so I asked my husband to review it first to make sure he was comfortable with me sharing about a “pre-him” relationship.

I fell in love three times in my life.  Each time was deeper than the time before.  The third and final time, I was 30 years old and dating my husband.  I love him in a way I didn’t know I was capable of loving before him.  We are about to celebrate nine years of marriage, and I am incredibly thankful for God piecing my heart back together.

The relationship I had before my husband started out as a friendship though we realized there was a bigger connection.  Almost a year after we became friends, we started dating.  As I mentioned yesterday, for reasons I didn’t understand then, I moved to a new city for a job opportunity while the relationship was still young.  I believed it would endure the transition.  We talked every day, and I visited him and he came to visit me.

He said all the right things, and I was a total words girl and fell for everything he said.  There were some warning signs from his past relationships, but I moved forward undeterred.  I believed I would end up moving back in a year’s time when the right job presented itself.

Then one Monday night a friend called from my old town.  She asked some general questions about my life and then started asking me if I was with this man the weekend before.  I responded yes, thinking she meant a full week ago.  She expressed her great relief because she had understood he’d spent the weekend with another woman in another town.  When I cleared up the dates, I realized the time period he had been unreachable the previous weekend he was with someone else.  He arrived in town that week, and when I confronted him with the information, I discovered that he was sleeping with someone else.

I was undone.  My heart was shattered.  Infidelity was a particularly acute fear of mine because my parents marriage unraveled for this exact same reason.

I would soon be turning 30 and had put my hopes of forever after aboard the Titanic.  I spent months questioning myself (not him, that is so frustrating to me now!).  I bore the shame of the relationship failure and questioned every decision I had made.  I very briefly dated bad choices in hopes they could say something that would make me feel better about myself.  I made decisions out of a wounded place instead of a wise one.

It is perfectly appropriate to mourn the loss of a relationship.  It is not okay to let it haunt you and define you and inform your next romantic choices.

I got healthy and was comfortable being alone when I met my husband.  And because of my prior two heartbreaks, I made certain things nonnegotiable in a relationship.  Not an unreasonable list of things, but critical criteria made it to the top of my evaluation in a way they hadn’t before.  At the top of that list was honesty.  All the pretty in the words in the world will do you no good if you can’t trust one of them.  While I didn’t know I was in love with my husband for several months, he had me hooked the first night we met and we engaged in a vigorous debate.  He wasn’t trying to charm me with blowing a bunch of smoke, he was DEBATING me for Pete’s sake.  The quality might not have topped my list five years before, but honesty has created the foundation for an incredible love that I didn’t even know was possible.

It came out of failure.  Broken messy ugly shards pieced into a beautiful mosaic I couldn’t have imagined at the time.

Failures are an indication you are living.  They are a layover en route to your destination.  Do not give up because you failed.  Be thankful you are still here and can try again.  You can take a new route.  You can recalibrate your plan.  You can rest confident in the fact that He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.  (Phil 1:6)

I’ve had great jobs and not great jobs.  I’ve had great bosses and not great bosses.  I’ve had big career successes and sad failures. 

If you missed yesterday, I’m writing about the purpose in your failures this week.  You can read about it if you’d like more background on today’s post. 

Today I’m talking about something that I told two of my closest girlfriends less than a year ago that I would never share.  I have got to stop staying never.  God takes that as a line in the sand and regularly makes me cross to the other side. 

I’m not planning on sharing any details, but I lost a job. 

I tend to be an overachieving perfectionist so this was a devastating loss. 

I also have no family money, so it was an incredibly fearful period in my life as well. 

There were numerous factors, one of which was a very problematic relationship with a boss having personal struggles beyond my control, but it ultimately led to my boss telling management they had a choice, and I drew the short straw in the choice outlined.  Management delivered the message softly, but it still shook me and shocked me. 

I spent two months (gratefully while still employed) searching for jobs in several cities.  I had just begun a relationship (tomorrow’s post) and wasn’t anxious to move.  I spent weeks in between replies of “we don’t have a place for you,” and “we’re thinking about opening something up in six months” weighing if I would be a good barista and if it could cover my bills. 

I ended up with two offers.  While neither of them were the dream job I’d outlined in my head, one offer made sense and one didn’t make sense.  One kept me in my town and one moved me.  One my best friend supported and one she said was an unnecessary choice.  I choice the latter one. 

Aside from some inexplicable intervention from God to nudge me to the yes to the latter choice, I have no reason to support why I said yes to the latter.

Not to blow the punchline or anything, but the latter choice ended up being the right choice. 

I was miserable for a year though.  

I held on to that job loss grief for far longer.  Everyone thought my choice was voluntary because that is the face you put on those things, but it was not.  I wore failure like a hidden cloak of shame and it tinted every job decision I made for years.  It made me fearful.  It made me insecure.  It made me doubt my abilities. 

I let that go.  Eventually, I released the shame.  I saw the loss was a necessary evil.  One, it brought me to a place I needed to go but wouldn’t have traveled to on my own.  Two, it helped me understand others going through similar losses (I remember acutely empathizing with the throngs of lawyers who lost their job in 2008).  Three, it made me thankful for a job I loved.  Four, it reminded me God provides even when it seems impossible. 

I do wish I could shortcut your journey through the pain though.  The failure still haunting you or that you are in the middle of can often arrest your confidence and color your judgment.  Failure whispers to you to take the safe choice instead of the best one.  Failure encourages you to pick security because you’ve been thrust into a season of insecurity. 

Can you step back for a minute?  Silence the scared voice.  Look at the season or the choices as if they were your friend’s season or choices.  If you were independent, then what would you counsel?  Is there someone you can be transparent enough with to get unfiltered, but wise, counsel? 

This loss does not define you.  This failure is not who you are.  You are capable.  You are smart.  You are strong.  {===>Tweet This}  You will move beyond this and the change in course may offer even brighter opportunities.