Success doesn't mean lack of failure

I don't know why it's on my heart to tell this story to my readers today but for some reason God has put this on my heart to share with you. Maybe it has something to do with it being around the time for midterms and final exams or maybe I once again just need to humble myself to my readers. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this story and learn how big our God is because of it. 

Two summers ago I finished my Bachelor degree and was in the process of deciding whether I should pursue a Masters in Forensic Psychology or a Masters in Divinity. I hope you can see struggle between the two because if I made the "wrong" choice it wouldn't be easy to switch subjects. Regardless, after what seemed to be sign after sign after sign of God pointing towards an MDiv I decided to take the leap and apply to Regent College. Nerve-wracked I waited for my acceptance or rejection letter. When it finally came I was over the roof with excitement that I had made it into the college of my dreams. A few weeks later I went to go visit the college and when talking to the counsellor she told me that each credit was $515. "That's not bad!" I thought to myself, "it's pretty much the same as UVic". Little did I realize that at UVic one class is one credit, whereas at Regent (at the time) one class was three credits. This led to my first humbling moment at Regent because after I registered for my first two classes and then realized I owed the school not $1000 but $3000 I had to postpone starting the classes in order to save up more money to pay for them. 

A month later, however, I paid of my student fees, ordered my text books, and started my first two masters classes! This was an exciting time for me because I no longer had to take classes I didn't like just to get the degree I really wanted. I'm now going to fast-forward to my first midterm, which was Old Testament Foundations. I was two and a half months into the course (they took extra long because they were through distance ed.) and I had read half of my text book as well as the entire pentateuch. Although I can't remember a lot of it anymore, I actually had about 75% of the people from those books memorized as well as their life stories. I knew the genealogies and a lot of ittie-bittie details about gnats and deserts and mana and other stuff too. Anyhoo -- I was going to ACE my midterm, I had never studied for a test so hard in my whole entire life and finally the time came for me to sit down with my friend and have her watch over me while I would sit there and allow everything I had taken weeks to memorize to pour over onto the test pages. So, the way the test was created was if you put down an answer and got it right you would get one mark, if you didn't put down an answer you would get zero marks and if you put down an answer and got it wrong you would be subtracted a mark. The test was out of forty so when I started writing the test I decided to answer all the questions I for sure knew first, which was about 22. I then decided I could intellectually guess about a few more answers and probably get them right... 24. By this point I started feeling a little panicked. 24/40 isn't that bad for a test, it's 60%. Oh wait, did I forget to mention that you need 70% to pass the test -- yes, this is why the panic set in. I honestly don't remember what happened for the remained of the hour I had left but when I got my results back I ended up getting 46%. This was by far the worst test I had ever failed in my entire life. I think I cried for three days straight when I got my results back. 

However, I decided to carry on with the course and then re-take it in the summer. I kept on going with reading my text book and the rest of the Old Testament (Psalms, Proverbs, wisdom books, prophetic books, Judges, etc.). I finally finished all the material for the class and when I wanted to start studying for my final I got a massive pain behind my left shoulder. I went to the doctor and he said that it was just pain because of stress (in retrospect it probably had something to do with the tumour that was sitting on my heart and pushing on all my internal organs towards the left). I ended up getting a month long extension for my class and was partially relieved but mainly just frustrated that once again I was hitting a setback in my studies. 

Anyhoo -- I once again studied hard for my final exam, prayed that I would do okay in it, memorized the package we were given to look at, and set up a date and time with my friend so she would once again watch over me while I wrote my final. Once again I don't remember exactly what happened in the exam but I again started by writing all the answers I for sure knew, I then went onto the answers I was pretty sure I knew and finally left the answers I had no idea about. I think this time, however, I had about 36/40 answers written on the test. I think a month went by before I got the results for the class but when I checked the website for the 100th time I looked at my class mark and saw beside it a "B". The first thought I had was, "well that's a cruel joke." I think called my TA to ask her what went wrong with my mark but she assured me that it was not a joke and that that was my final mark in the class. She told me I got an A on my final and that she was smiling the whole way through while she marked it. Even now when I tell this story I'm still in shock. 

I primarily don't understand how I failed that first midterm, because I've never studied so hard in my entire life. I secondly don't understand how I passed that class after failing the midterm by a flipping 24% (ugh -- that's bad). But somehow God is gracious and sometimes he carries out the plans he has for our lives. I'm still not sure how a lot of things in my life right now are going to carry out but I like finding peace in his presence. My story reminds me a little bit of the Michael Jordan quote that says, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." So, no matter what you're trying to achieve right now, don't be sidetracked by the roadblocks. If you fail at one point or another it's okay to spend one, or two, or even three days crying over your losses. But eventually you have to get up and keep going. You don't know what potential is waiting to be released inside of you, and potential is one of the most powerful forces God has placed inside each and every one of us.