Epic Fail

 "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  Philippians 1:6

I am the queen of good intentions.

I really do hate that characteristic about myself.

It means I come up with all these great ideas, and it means that I can't get them all done.  Or even most of them some days.  Which is frustrating to no end.  I have a package that has been waiting for me to take it to the post office for months now.  Crafty gifts to make for loved ones.  I recently found a stash of old (filled out but never sent) thank yous from one of our boys birthday parties oh, last year, I think?  I have all kinds of things to do that would be so great if I could just find the time  . . . I know it would be a blessing to someone, but I just can't seem to squeeze it into my life, or in my priorities perhaps.  The "tyranny of the urgent" has become my life these days, which is simply maddening.

Then there are all those "mom" moments where I feel like a failure.  Things like how last week I was putting Ava to bed.  The bedtime routine was stretching out into an hour long process and I had just about had it.  So I stomped into Ava's room and starting yelling at her, telling her how I couldn't take it any longer!  She needed to get to bed and now!!  And what did she do?  My little Ava looked up at me from her bed with eyes filled with big crocodile tears and said, "But Mommy.  I am just a little girl and you are not supposed to yell at me."  It kind of felt as if I had been punched in the gut.

I felt like such a failure.  That of course is just one moment out of the many moments where I am aware of how I have failed my kids, my husband, my family.  Where I want to crawl into bed and stay there forever.  

On Sunday, our pastor shared some things that I have continued to think about ever since.  He was teaching from Mark 14:66-72 on the topic of Peter.  I cannot do the entire topic justice of course, but I will share what I got out of it and how it got me thinking.  Basically Peter like really screwed up.  He had just denied knowing Christ.  And if we look only at that slice of his life we would probably think, wow, what a waste.  He was a big FAIL.  And by doing that, we would be overlooking what a huge impact he would go on to make after Jesus' death.  Which then got me thinking about King David.  David did stuff that would make us gasp if we heard the story about a friend of ours.  He fell in love with someone else's wife then proceeded to plot the husband's murder so that he could have this guy's wife.  Um, yeah, that's pretty bad, right!  If we just saw this part of his story, we would think he was a complete failure.  But isn't it interesting that this guy was one that was called a "man after God's own heart".  [Things that make you go, huh?]

There are people in my life for whom I pray desperately for.  People I love who seem like they are set on the path of destruction.  You may have people like that in your life, too.  And I struggle to not give up hope.  To keep believing that someday they will have an amazing testimony of God's grace and faithfulness in their life.  

I guess what I am saying is that I think we get so caught up in judging other people-- and ourselves-- when we can't see the whole picture.  We have no idea what God is doing in someone else's life.  And in our own.  So when we see someone struggling,  who looks like they are in the pit (and maybe they truly are), it is a good thing to remember to pray for them.  Praying that God will do a mighty work in their life and change them into the people that He wants them to be.  I do not want to give up praying for those people who seem "too far gone" . . . because we have NO IDEA of what the future holds for them.  And not only for other people, but for me, too.  I need to practice giving myself grace instead of beating myself up over my past failures and failed good intentions.