Failing for Hope

God has bigger things in mind.

I've heard this throughout my pilgrimage.  God wants to bless.  God wants to conquer.  God wants to overcome.  It always sounded like God was pithy, and straight to the point.  No nonsense. No compromise.  No latitude.  Speak and you shall vanquish. Ask and you shall receive.

But what if God had all the little things in mind?

You know.  The process.  A transformation.  A very holiness that championed struggle and not completeness or wholeness.  Recently I shared, very affectionately and vulnerably about my ex "best friend" and girlfriend and my struggle  to be diligent, mindful, cordial, and civil, as she very freshly and successful entered into a relationship.  One that would bitch slap me in the face by way of her being around me and my space more than ever before when we were the best of friends.  I did not take this well as you might imagine, when this process started.

I was angry.  Bitter.  Insecure.  Petty.  I protested to whoever, my poor roommates probably wanted to hang me by my fingernails.  I didn't suffer.  I complained.  I did it harshly, and mostly focused on my selfish woundedness.  I was proud that I had cut her out of my life, like it was coming off a vision quest to beat all vision quests.  But this isn't the honeymoon the cosmos had in mind for me.  I asked the Pastor, now some months into this "thorn in my flesh", with an admission that I needed forgiveness.  Pastor, I asked- Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I wanted forgiveness.  I told my pastor, I didn't want the end result,  wise counsel, rebuke, and eventual restoration if that's what the process required.

No Pastor, I asked just PRAY for me.  I wanted to be angry but to do it well and with a good heart.  I wanted to feel my emotions, but in a constructive way.

I'm moving beyond want-ed, and moving into want-ing.  I'm wanting to suffer well, my relational baggage aside and in life in general.  My status isn't as well defined and fluid.  I am wanting to make a ritual of thankfulness and gratitude around my weakness.  There's got to be a ritual to this right?  I'm wanting this very respectable person, worthy of every dignity and ounce of affection she is getting to be not happy, but healed from me.

I never thought I would be the guy somebody needed to be bound up and healed from.  And that's the littler thing I overlooked in the past.  I'm owning up to my part, and now I'm dealing with it in a way that is leading to growth, gradual change, a passionate affection, and a tender boldness.  I want those who know me, to see that I do struggle, and although it isn't pretty, it's worthwhile and transformational.

Hope is a contradiction to evolution.  The grandeur of our species is the ultimate result from a struggle, that decimates, on a stage made for spectacle it seems. It's fascinating our lust and bulging imagination to dream up disaster, and chaos, and yet the weakest pulse of consistency and obscurity has been our saving grace, and we often mock it.  I'd take insignificance over celebrity.

Failing on an equally grandeur level, akin to our nature is pure devastation.  That's the flaw in our logic. Failing is non life-like.  It's a disease, an unwanted appendage.  I pray that if anything, I remember to give the art of failing, it's creative, life- giving ability.  That there can be hope and faith.  That it isn't evil.  It's necessary.