I started reading this book today. It’s by John Maxwell.

I’ve only gotten through chapter two so far, but man is it good! And challenging.

I’ve always struggled with a fear of failure, and taking risks. As long as I can remember I’ve felt I needed to be "perfect" at something. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t even try it. It took me many years to get to a point where I’d risk looking like a fool, or worse, a failure, by stepping into things I didn’t think I could do.

For the most part, as I look back over the eight years or so since I started taking those steps, I see failure after failure. But I also see a difference in how I responded to those failures. It doesn’t keep me down as long as it used to. And it doesn’t scare me as much either.

I still have a few things in my life, however, that I look at as personal/ministry failures. India and Cyprus. I struggle with my own opinion of my time as co-team leader in India. And I have a love/hate relationship with my memories. I wouldn’t exchange the experience with a different one for all the money in the world. Yet at the same time, it was a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying one. The thing that frustrates me the most even now is that I cannot identify what exactly would have made it satisfying.

And Cyprus. I still cannot escape the deep sense that I failed because I didn’t return to the field. No amount of logic or reasoning or Scripture or God’s voice or… anything has yet to erase that sense. I just don’t know what to do with it all, how to view it.

Am I a failure? I don’t believe that question can be answered until I’m nearing the end of my days…. or perhaps until after I’m dead, for my story isn’t completely written yet. But, I must confess, there are days when I fear I am a failure. There are days when my mistakes and mis-steps pile so high that it’s hard to see past them and into my strengths. There are days when I feel I’m spending all my time in things that are not my strengths. It’s hard to not feel like a failure in that atmosphere.

That’s what I experienced that year in Cyprus. I felt so often I was not working in my strengths, and I despaired that I ever would be allowed to do so. In fairness, I cannot say that is the truth. For I don’t know if I would have been, nor do I truly know if I wasn’t working within my strengths. I have lost sight of "objective truth" (if such a thing exists) in that time period of my life. Its all a jumble of emotions and thoughts, struggles and spiritual warfare.

John Maxwell defines success in this way:

Knowing your purpose in life
Growing to reach your potential
Sowing seeds that benefit others

I wish I knew my purpose in life. I’ve read "Purpose Driven Life" and know all the churchy answers to this, about glorifying God and being a witness for Jesus to the world. But… it just seems to me, knowing God as I do, that I am not a random piece of Christ-tissue, here to just be one in a thousand. Perhaps that’s arrogant, but… dang, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I have a specific purpose, just as every cell in my body does. Sure every cell is here to keep me alive and well. But each one does it in a unique way. Even those with the same design have a specific purpose — whether that be to carry oxygen from my lungs to my heart, or to protect my soft parts by being a harder outer "shell"… every cell has a distinct, specific purpose. I’m convinced I do too. I just wish, with all my heart, I knew what it was (is)!

I’ve heard Erwin say on many occasions that for someone to say you have potential when you’re in your 20s is a compliment, but when they say it when you’re in your 40s, it’s an insult. As I read tonight, I came to the conclusion he’s wrong.

People in their 40s and 50s, even 70s and 80s, need to know there is still something in them that can be refined, seeds that still have yet to be sown and parts of them that still can grow.

But more than that, as I stare 40 in the face, I realize that, if I believe Erwin, then I condemn myself, as a failure, and to a life of mediocrity. There are still mountains to climb. Just because most people climb them in their 20s doesn’t mean that I can’t do it in my 40s. Just because I didn’t do it in my 30s doesn’t mean that I’ve missed my window of opportunity. Yes, the climb will be harder. I’m older and my body doesn’t respond as well to challenge, nor does it bounce back as quickly from fatigue and injury. It may take me longer, I will have to work harder. But I can still do it.

I’ve heard that the people who live the longest all have one thing in common: they never quit learning. They were always trying, learning, doing something new. I don’t want to live long. Right now I’m fighting an on-going fear of growing old. I don’t want to be alive when I’m 70 or 80, or, God forbid, even older. No, I’ve seen what age does to a body. No thank you. I’d like to die young please. But if I must grow old, and live well into those undesired ages… well then, I want to know there are still mountains I can climb. Okay, so those young’uns call it a "hill", but dang, it feels like a mountain to my legs!!

I like John Maxwell’s definition of success. But it’s a hard one for me to apply to my life, since it seems to me that all three go together and everything hinges on the first: "knowing your purpose in life."

I’m going to bed now, and perhaps my dreams will help me sort through all this and give me a little clarity…