Failure

On this little trip to the coast I've been panning for gold.

I found a little in a small water way called Big Creek.

Big Creek passing under Highway 30

Since I'm not doing it for money, but recreation, I take my time at it. I pull out the tiniest flecks of gold. I avoid letting any of the pretty metal slip by. I'm sure some does anyway, but I think I must be doing pretty good because when I go over it again I find that a few of those flecks aren't gold but pyrite. That means I accepted some of those flecks based on their color from a particular angle rather than the true properties of gold.

I've been looking over my life a great deal. Thinking, praying.

New Prayer done with Sharpies

I see things I thought was good, what I thought was right, but on closer examination I find aren't based on the true properties of "good."

When I was in my early 20s I did a lot of hiking and hitchhiking. I was enjoying nature, having adventures. I walked much of the John Muir Trail in Yosemite, the Pacific Crest Trail in the Sierra Nevadas.

It seemed good. I met wonderful people (and some not so much), I saw beautiful country.

But while I was doing that I wasn't growing, I wasn't maturing as I should have been to become a man, to be an adult who could lead his home, to earn a career that could support his family. It seemed good, it glittered, but it didn't pay in dividends of the true properties of "good." It didn't leave lasting good that might have better prepared me for my life, my marriage.

It was bright and shiny, but floated away as easily as a flake of pyrite.

I know I'm a pretty good guy. I know I love deeply, my God, my friends, my church, my wife... I know love covers a great deal.

But it also tends to hide the flecks of "fool's gold."

I am so ashamed of my failures.

Now before you jump to the comment box to write me an encouraging note (and thank you for the thought), think about what that awareness means.

I would say the awareness of failure can be a fleck of gold.

First, awareness of failure is humbling. If I swaggered through my life filled with false self-assuredness I would be lying to myself. I would never grow because I would see no reason to change.

Second, I see that no matter how much I want to be good, to do what is right, I am human and will, by my nature, fail. I continue to think of myself first (even now this post is all about me, not about God). I am human and it is right to remember that.

The failure which tears at me now is my marriage. It is the greatest failure of my life.

It would be easy to point out my wife's mistakes, her failures. Very easy. But that isn't honest.

Did I honor her as I should have? As I swore I would? Did I love her enough? Did I cherish her enough?

I have been walking and thinking and praying.

As I sat on a rock in that creek, my bare feet growing tender in the cool water. As I swirled the mud and sand around the pan I was watching dirt and rocks and debris flow out, watching for flecks of gold worth keeping. As I swirled the mud and sand I was looking at my own mistakes, grieving my own errors.

My life is full of errors. Much of it wasn't even fool's gold. Much of my errors was just like the mud lifting up right away when I dip the pan in the moving water. The water turns brown as the dirt rises from the sand, curling away in the shadows.

(click picture to see the gold)

I know that in the end much of what I have done in this life will vanish, wash away in the flow of eternity incarnate.

That is such a good thing. Such a good thing. A God thing.

In being brutally honest with myself I ache under this self flagellation of examining my mistakes. Though He cannot abide my sin, He won't embrace it, hold it, cling to it. I still do, and some day I will follow His example.


Won't it by wonderful when I can get past this time of painful growth? Won't it be wonderful when I am no longer tempted by selfish motives, selfish self absorption? Won't it be wonderful to slip into eternity where a single day in His courts is worth a thousand elsewhere, where a single day may be a thousand thousand days elsewhere, elsewhen?

I don't think my marriage is going to survive. I don't believe my wife will undergo the kind of internal rebirth, internal cleansing (which only God can do, a true miracle), which would give me the assurance we could be man and wife.

I am quite sad over it. Not just her mistakes, her failures, but my own. I wish I was a better man. I am quite sad about it.

If she does not move on the paperwork soon, I will.

Now... you can jump in and leave those comments if you feel led to do so... but I would like to say that even though this looks like I am just continuing to beat myself up, I am really just taking these few days washing water over my life and looking carefully at the flecks, determining which are gold, and which are the imagination of a fool.

Today's find on my room key.