Your Calling, Your Failure

What happens when you’re failing at your calling?

That thing that you feel you were meant to do or be is turning out to be nothing like you imagined. Maybe you poured everything into it, but it seems like a diasater or, worse, a fiasco. You don’t feel the internal sense of satisfaction you thought would come with this life. Maybe you’re giving it your all on the way to a goal you feel meant to pursue, but doors are being shut in your face. Maybe you’re feeling discouraged and wondering if it’s really your calling after all. Maybe something just blew up in your face, and it seems that all you’ve worked for just imploded. Can you even recover from this? Maybe you’re looking back, and it’s too late to change the past, and you’re grieving what can’t be altered. You aren’t failing, you’ve failed.

“As somebody once said, there’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-present of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folktale told to others, that makes other people feel more… alive. Because it didn’t happen to them.” – Drew Baylor in Elizabethtown (2005)

Maybe that’s how you’re feeling right now, and you’re wondering what to do.

I can’t tell you what to do, but here’s what I do know. Jeremiah.

Talk about a guy who had every reason to question his calling. He hears God. He obeys God. He does some pretty crazy things by anyone’s standards. He is all in. Results: horrible. Nobody listens. His life seems a lot like a failure. And yet, we are still reading his story thousands of years later.

But he wasn’t a failure. He was right where he was meant to be.

And where did he end up?  For a time, he was literally stuck in the mud.

So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud. -Jeremiah 38:6 (ESV)

Maybe you’ve been there metaphorically. Probably not literally.

How discouraged did he feel? Did he question his entire life? Did he think he was a failure? His laments let us know he wasn’t always a ray of sunshine, and rightfully so. But he also trusted in God. He knew where to set his face.

Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved,
for you are my praise.  – Jeremiah 17:14 (ESV)

Bring your concerns to God. Seek Him to confirm that you’re still on the right path. Sometimes, God calls us to something and then calls us to something else. Maybe it’s time to pivot. Maybe it’s time to let go. Maybe it’s time to lean in even harder. Ask Him.

But don’t let the results of your work be the measurement of your calling. Your level of obedience and submission to God is what matters. The results are up to Him.

It seems ironic that the weeping profit would be the encourager of the floundering, sort of like the hero of losers, failures, and the dispirited.

Let me end with yet another quote from one of my all-time favorite movies.

“So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you’re still smiling.” – Claire Colburn- Elizabethtown (2005)

Trust God and keep following Him. Maybe smile a little, too.