Recovering from Failure
Not too long ago, I made a mistake. Well, that feels a bit like a euphemism. I sinned. My sin wasn’t salacious or scandalous. It wasn’t even gossip-worthy, but the exact details of my sin aren’t important. What’s important to me is what I do after I’ve sinned. Whenever we fail, be it in our vocation or our personal spiritual life, our failure has the potential to derail us. We can experience guilt and shame which can leave us stuck. This stuck-ness can result in further failures and even self-sabotage. This is not God’s will for us. God wants us to recover and grow, and I’ve found that this primarily happens through prayer. In prayer, I hold what I am noticing within me in conversation with the Spirit who is with me. It is in prayer that our faith in God’s love grows and a confident hope that redemption is possible emerges.
I’ve had some time to sit with my sin and I’ve been periodically returning to this newsletter draft to update what I noticed happening in me and through me as I prayed my way through my failure. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed.
Avoidance
The first awareness I had after sinning was that I do not want to pay attention to my sin. I don’t want to think about it, and I certainly don’t want to pray about it. I want to deny it and ignore it. I know this is dangerous. It’s dangerous to wall of our sin and adopt the posture: “Out of sight, out of mind.” I’ve learned that if we ignore our sin it will come back to bite us later. I’ve learned that I can’t segment off my sin into a corner of my soul and not deal with it. My sin is a part of me, and the best course of action is to acknowledge and integrate it.
Integrating it into my life means looking at it and praying with it. It means I notice all the contours of my sin. I ask the Lord to help me see what lies beneath it: the thoughts, assumptions, and desires that motivated my sin.
I do this by talking about it. I talk about in prayer. I talk about it with those I trust. And now, I write about it. This is all part of my integration. This sin is a part of me. It doesn’t define me, but it is a part of my story. I can’t avoid that.
Shame
Another awareness I have is the presence of shame. My sin was done somewhat publicly but also anonymously. I wonder, did anyone I know see me do this? I feel embarrassed. At the heart of shame is the fear of rejection. Shame is the embodied, visceral response to a ruptured relationship. So in shame, I fear that if someone saw me do what I did, they will view me as unworthy of relationship. They will shun me.
In order to heal, I look at the shame, and I accept that someone may have seen me do what I did. They may choose not to be in relationship with me because of what I did. The solution to this loss is not to hide it through denial or blame. Shame only grows more pernicious when we hide what we are ashamed of. The solution is to accept it. I accept that this failure is a part of who I am. I did this. I accept that some people may choose to avoid me because of it. However, I also hope that anyone who saw me do this will extend grace to me and accept me as the flawed person that I am.
Grief
I am also aware of grief. There is terrible grief and sadness over my sin. Teresa of Avila talks about the reverent fear she had of offending “His Majesty.” This feels right to me. I feel sad about the spiritual significance of my sin. I have occasionally had a vision of the deep things in my soul and in the soul of the one I wronged that shifted because of my sin. This awareness grieves me. I can’t undo this.
However, at no point do I sense the Lord rejects me. There is loss, but there is also love. I know his love for me as a sinner, and I have hope that there is redemption. I cling to this, otherwise, my grief could turn into a heavy and unbearable burden of guilt. That sort of guilt is a form of neurosis, and I reject it. I choose instead to cling to God’s love for me in the midst of naming my grief. I have offended him. He has forgiven me. He can bring healing and redemption from this loss.
Hidden Gifts
The next thing I do is look for the grace in my sin. I notice the gift of insight: my sin was the product of an unhealed wound. I was reactive because something tender and vulnerable in me was prodded and poked. God’s response to my sin is not condemnation, but an invitation to deeper healing for this wound. So, I look at this wound and wonder, “How can I turn towards the Lord for healing?”
There is no formula here. I must wait and trust that God is the healer. In the meantime, I am paying particular attention to the root issue at the center of my wound. I have been surprised by how often this part of me hurts. There is more healing to be done, but I see the potential for God’s grace to bring more good and healing out of my sin than the bad that I caused.
Confession
In this process, I also recognized the need to tell the truth about my sin to the person I wronged. My particular context makes this impossible, but I imagined myself apologizing and naming why I wronged him. I said it out loud, and then I’ve been praying for him.
Reflect
Lastly, I ask questions about what circumstances are unfolding in my broader life right now that may have contributed to my failure. Am I operating outside of my limits? Am I feeling a particular amount of stress? Am I living/walking by the flesh? These questions might inform how urgently I need to get away on retreat. Or they may suggest I need to pull back from a responsibility I’m not called to carry. There is one habit I am noticing that might have contributed to this, and I’m planning to make a change. However, I think my sin is primarily the fruit of an old wound that needs tending to and not fundamentally rooted in the circumstances that prompted it.
This has been my process for facing and praying through my sin. This is who I am. I make mistakes, and I sin. I can’t deny this. My desire is that I wouldn’t be hampered by neurotic guilt or debilitating shame. I also want to receive the gift that God wants to give to me in the midst of this. I emerge from this process feeling hopeful and more deeply trusting in God’s care for me.
For further wondering: what prayerful self-reflection do you do when you are aware that you have sinned?