if at first you don’t succeed

It happened, all in about week’s time, it did.  Over and over again.

My daughter, after a season of giving up, retrieved her bow and arrow from the garage and set up her target. I found her in the woods, happily searching for a wayward arrow.

In my kitchen, where sometimes I believe (falsely) that I’m a master of all things baking, there was a beautiful knot of dough with the wrong amount of yeast in the trash can.  There I stood at my baker’s counter kneading another boule.

Husband, in a white hazmat suit, began installing insulation in his shop after being in a holding pattern of “not yet” and “can’t” for what seemed like possibly forever.

I crossed the finish line with frozen toes and my breath in view.  Two years ago I began a similar journey, but only with mild success.   This time,  joy, tears and a medal…

At church, my bow pulled across the strings of my violin, after quite a lengthy period of silence. Oh the pure happiness of calloused fingertips…

All of us giving it another go.

Sometimes the trial of errors and the horror of failure can be weighty on my heart and soul.  So much so, that is hard to pick up and give it another go.  The old saying alone, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” is lack-luster in it’s inspiration.

Why in the world would I try again to be something I thought I was, in order to find (again) that I’m not good enough, or capable enough?

Typically I think of myself as part wife, mom, musician, baker, runner.  And while those pieces of me are at different stages of development, I am not equal to the sum of those parts.  I am more.

When I acknowledge that my actual whole self’s worth is found in who I am in Christ, I realize I am exponentially myself.  All of the truth of who He is, becomes mine.  whoa.  Who I am does not rely on how hard I try.  

This is good news, friends!  It frees me to give, again and again, without suffering the shame of mistakes.  I don’t have to believe the lie that I’m not who I thought I was.  In my best reality I’m fully loved as a daughter of the King, capable of being exactly who He made me to be.  By His strength, by His wisdom, by His gifts – a wife, mom, musician, baker, runner – and so, so, so much more.

I can try, try again.

I am believing these words today from Ephesians 1:  “I am accepted in the Beloved.”

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.