To my child:
You may come to a place in your life – you may have already been there a while – where the magnitude or the multitude of your mistakes seems overwhelming or at least daunting. You may feel shame at those mistakes made or even helplessness in making them, that you were somehow always destined to fail so miserably. You may even believe those mistakes are past all redemption, that you can never come back from them. That all lenses others look through to see you have been indelibly tinted with your inadequacy and you will always be judged wanting.
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The danger, I have found, in this dark, churning thought process is the point where you feel alone. Where you know you desperately need help but which will not come because you are invisible. Lost. Left.
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It is a lie, my love. I promise with every wound I have sustained and every scar that marks me, that there is a God. That his eye is ever on your form. That he has engraved you on the palm of his hand. That he has plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
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I have been in that dark place, so deeply in the dark I couldn’t see the truth from the lies in the gloom that crusted in my eyes. I have thought, “My mistakes are too much. I will never be able to come back from them. All my efforts have come to nothing but shame.”
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Do you know the one thing that turned everything around? I fell in love. But that is not the Thing that changed everything. Oh, it was big. It was everything I had imagined for 30 years and no longer believed existed. But what that did, interestingly, was thrust me into God’s presence. There was so much uncertainty in that time, so much heartache blended in with the wonder of it all, that I was faced with my own inadequacy to navigate these foreign waters. Falling in love was the catalyst for my utter helplessness before God. I knew, despite the many years of difficulty understanding God amidst my endless questioning, that the only one who knew the way through this maze to the future I envisioned for myself was God. He was the only one who knew which step my foot should take at each turn. I knew it. I knew it all the way through me. This was far too important for me to risk screwing it up because I was too proud to see my complete incompetence.
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And that whole process led me to understand the most important truth I have ever known. When all was dark and swirling madly around me, I asked for the one thing I knew would make it possible for me to keep to the path that would lead me to my future. And that was wisdom.
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The previous year had been the worst year of my life to date. Basically, except for my health, every area of my life had imploded. And in my utter misery and despair and hopelessness I had made many mistakes, chipped away with my own hands at my precious, carefully honed reputation. But it wasn’t until my heart was on the line that my pride cracked and I acknowledged I needed God. In that whole year, I had prayed for many things; wept for them: help, deliverance, escape, peace, you name it. But, despite seeking wisdom in some form or another all my life, taking to heart all the sermons about its worth, I had somehow managed to forget to ask for wisdom. That whole year. Not once. And the year just kept getting worse. Until, my heart breaking, I turned to God and asked for wisdom. I didn’t ask for anything else for myself. Just wisdom to guide my footsteps so I could get through this and learn from it. And it became a habit to ask for wisdom first and last.
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This habit extended to all areas of my life, including work. And as the following year began, I began asking for love as well as wisdom. I knew as I faced another year in an unchanged situation, wisdom would give me everything I needed. Help when that was what I needed, blessing in my endeavors, good words in any situation, patience with my students. Wisdom is the panacea for all ills, and I was facing many of them.
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And as I continued asking for wisdom and love, I found another truth I had never realized before. Wisdom and love are two sides of the same coin. Perfect wisdom is perfect love; perfect love is perfect wisdom. And if you have God’s love in your heart, you will have wisdom in every word, every action, every venture.
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And lo and behold, I found that all that I had believed irredeemable was steadily redeemed. My reputation became solid again. My name had become a blessing, not a byword anymore. I had everything I needed in wisdom and God was faithful to save, even mistakes I thought too dire to be fixed.
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You will, sooner or later, struggle with feelings of being a failure. You will feel too far gone, too imperfectly made, too human and flawed. It is the nature of this life. But greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. He will be faithful to save, to rescue, to redeem because of his name’s sake, because he promised to do so, promised to answer those who call, and he cannot renege on his promises. He will give you wisdom, no exceptions, when you ask for it with a sincere heart, because that is the most worthy prayer. The most pleasing prayer because it is only with wisdom that one can see God’s nature and understand that we need him.
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Ask for wisdom. Whenever you are unsure, ask for wisdom. Ask and believe, and you will receive. Count on it.
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