On Thankfulness and Failure

Two days before Christmas in 2013 I sat in the crumbling waiting room of my local WIC office with my almost two month-old baby, bundled in his hand-me-down Gap fleece onesie, sleeping peacefully in his car seat. Before they give you the coupons necessary to get formula, they require you to bring your baby into the office to prove you actually have a baby. So here I sat, snow boots, down coat, sleeping baby, waiting for somebody to call my name. Waiting for somebody to help me do what I could not do for myself or my child.

It had been a rough two months. My baby wouldn’t latch, and no amount of effort from me or the lactation consultants I’d seen seemed to change that. My husband had lost his job three days after our son was born. I’d left my job as a labor attorney with a major city agency the year before just as my star was beginning to rise and I was being considered for a major promotion, to follow this really clear calling to a really unclear path in ministry. I was working part time, making less money than I’d made in 15 years while being a full time seminary student. I’d wanted to be a mother for 10 years and this was NOT how I pictured this chapter of my story beginning. Who would have thought that two and a half degrees, a decade of climbing the professional ladder and a simple yes to a call I didn’t understand would land me in an office waiting for coupons to buy formula that I could not otherwise afford. It felt ridiculous…irresponsible. The shame weighed more heavily on me than the extra baby weight I was carrying. I had an idea of who I should be. This woman, sitting in a dirty waiting room, watching DVDs of cartoons on a 20 year old television monitor, unable to afford to feed her newborn baby was not it. I didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t that quiet storm of a litigator who I’d grown into. So who was this? From all appearances, she was a failure. But appearances are deceiving. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was a bad ass in the making.

Sometimes we look at the bottom falling out of the lives we have created, the ones we work hard to build, and we think we are failing…that we are losing. The truth of the matter is that in those moments, that is EXACTLY what is happening. Or maybe the truth is there is no failure - there are only victories and lessons learned. What I learned from that cold winter afternoon’s visit to the WIC office in South Chicago and the many subsequent visits to the office to get formula, milk, cereal, cheese and bread, was that failure and loss are part of the process of becoming who God (or the divine, the creator, Allah, the universe or whatever you call the ultimate cause) has created us to be. I had a curly haired, big beautiful eyed baby boy with a sweet temperament to raise. I didn’t want him to be afraid to fail; to be too prideful to ask for help when he needed it. So God had to show me how to persevere through failure, to put my pride aside and get the help I needed. I had to learn the lessons first. You can’t teach something you don’t know.

The road has not been smooth or easy since then, but things have gotten better. I am still a work in progress. If I am thankful for anything as we look toward the season when we celebrate our blessings, I thank God that I can say I'm a work in progress. Being a work in progress means that I am always progressing, always evolving, always moving in the direction of the destiny for which I have been created. I can tell you about the losses, all the disappointments, all the pain that has come with this transition. I can tell you the price I have paid to be the confident, courageous, God-loving woman you see today. I can tell you the price but I don’t know if there is a way to adequately articulate the value of the journey I have taken to get here.

Some wise unknown Facebook sage once said “The woman you’re becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces and material things. Choose her over everything.” I would add it will cost you your pride, your ideas about what should be, your comfort, your lack of faith, your addiction to easy answers and quick solutions – choose her over everything. Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, nor has any mind conceived the great things in store for her. Become that woman, that mother, that partner, that friend. I think that what you’ll discover is that the cost of all those losses will be vastly outweighed by the value of becoming the woman you were called and created to be. Don’t worry about the costs. Find the inarticulable value in the journey into yourself.