Am I failing... or is this just living?

(mm... I'm just thinking. This could be long)

I was thinking today that… perhaps I’ve never really known what it was like to fail at anything. I mean, my life has been pretty good and all. But then I began to wonder… maybe I have been a failure and I’m just too naïve to notice.

I don’t have a real good recollection of my youth, but I remember not being a real good basketball or baseball player. I went to a small school and one was expected to do these things. I finally was able to escape the embarrassment by deciding to “concentrate” on football and track. Not a big deal.

Then there was my junior year in high school. As a sophomore I had started as a wide receiver and cornerback. This year the coach wanted me to play quarterback and safety – even though I ‘wanted’ to be a running back. I think it was the third or fourth game he told me I could call my own plays. I fumbled the ball SIX times that game. Even though we won, I told him afterwards I couldn’t continue as quarterback and was either going to quit or needed to play a different position. He put me back at receiver. So I could have been a failure, but I ended up playing a number of different positions that year - and really enjoyed being relieved of the pressure. One game I threw a touchdown pass, caught a touchdown pass, and ran for a touchdown.

There were high expectations for me my senior year in track. I had qualified for state the two previous years – but all on relays. This year I was the ‘featured’ sprinter. I had the fastest qualifying 100 meter time in our district. At the qualifying meet for state I easily won the preliminary rounds in the 100, and while running the 200 meter prelim I was running perhaps the best race of my life – it felt soooo good. Until I blew my hamstring about ¾ of the way into the race. I still managed to qualify for finals. I ended up barely being able to get in the starting blocks for the 100, and false started. I couldn’t even run by the time the 200 finals came around. Failure or hard luck?

I also have had several girls who dumped me. And I’ve dumped some of them. Even though I ended up well and have a wonderful wife, it’s not like our marriage has been 24 years of bliss. We ‘might’ have had as many good years as bad ones by now, but I haven’t been counting lately.

I quit college after two years and no degree right out of high school – even though I was only one semester away from an Electronics Repair degree in 1983. And even when I went back to school and seminary… the whole plan was to plant a church. Instead I ended up in a small country church that was basically the kind of place I said I would NEVER go to. But I actually think all those people who say planting is so much better than trying to deal with an old church are maybe not entirely correct. And even though things aren’t exactly going the way I had hoped, I have a hard time looking at it as hope-less.

So, am I a failure? I don’t know… seems pretty much like life to me. Sure I have tripped and fallen and been hurt time and again. But I have also been able to run and play and love. Perhaps failure is only fatal when we let it define us. But as my friend Jason once said, “The point is dying if we don’t live when we’re alive.”

Here’s to livin’ life, my friends. Rock on.