seventy times seven

I failed. I failed one time. They gave me a second chance and I failed. There’s no getting around it. I tell the story differently every time someone asks, but it always ends the same way: I failed. I cried. I still do sometimes. But I cried more that day than I had in months before then. “What am I doing?” “Why is this happening?” “Is this a sign that I’m not supposed to be a nurse?” Questions pelted my aching, tired head like a round of bullets. It sounds dramatic, but for the first time it seemed that the maize and blue floor I was so firmly planted on was crumbling beneath my feet. It didn’t feel real. I went to a meeting with a coffee the size of a small bucket in my hand just to sit there and be told I had to take all these classes a year from now. There was no getting around it. This is going on your permanent record. It felt like she was tattooing it into my skin. Failure, in big bold letters in a font I hated, plastered across my forehead. I could almost see it in the reflection of the Nursing School doors as I left the building that day.

“Now what?”

It began to rain as I left the building. Perfect, right? It was like the end of a romantic movie except there was no love interest or dramatic kiss or old car or a guy singing with an umbrella. There was just me in a damp yellow raincoat with an empty coffee cup and hot tears running down my face.

“Now what?”

Some voice somewhere was screaming it at me. I wanted to get in my obnoxiously bright yellow car and drive and drive and never come back. I actually, in all honesty, considered buying a plane ticket to Scotland, but a friend of mine informed me that the crime rates were really high there and for some reason that worked in controlling my irresponsible impulse.

I didn’t pray that day or the day after or the week after for the matter. I didn’t want to talk to God. Somehow, I felt it necessary to be mad at an infinitely big God who defeated death and sin for me just because my picture perfect college career wasn’t so perfect anymore. Sounds foolish right? But I did it. I ignored Him or any sign of him in hopes that He’d see me in the corner with my bottom lip sticking out and my arms crossed and take some type of unwarranted pity on me.  

A day later I sat on the couch as big life questions were still hitting my head in bullet form. My mouse hovered over the list of nursing classes I was supposed to take that semester. I clicked each one, unenrolling myself from the class. “You had better do it soon,” the hispanic lady with the metaphorical tattoo gun said to me, “or I will have to do it for you.” I could hear it ringing in my head as I signed up for two random other classes. “At least you will be able to finish your elective credits this semester,” she said trying to comfort me as the tattoo gun buzzed loudly inside my skull. Was she really trying to encourage me? I gulped down a few tears as I signed up for a couple random religion classes that totaled seven credits. Failure on my forehead reflected in my dirty laptop screen and I shut it wildly.

“Why.”

Why? I didn't know the answer then and honestly, I don't know the full answer now- maybe I never will. But the unanswerable is beautiful because I have found joy in the answerer. That "failure" that was tattooed into my scrunched up, tired forehead now tells an entirely different story. It tells a story of grace that unlike the nursing school, God has given me chances to run back to him time and time again. I wanted to be angry at God, and honestly I spent quite a bit of time doing that. But now- looking back on the mess of the beginning of the semester, with God's help, I see nothing but a beautiful reminder of gospel truths. 

Romans 5

2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

• God has given me grace that I don't deserve and for that, I rejoice.

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

• God works through our sufferings to give us hope, fill us with love, and ultimately bring glory onto Himself.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore,we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

• That label of "failure" has turned to "loved" because of what Christ did for me. 

I even am starting to see God in the gray of the sky.