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singing-and-stethoscopes-blog · 7 years

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what two years of fucking up taught me about grace

I wrote this piece a while ago on a different medium, but it’s interesting how it’s even more relevant to my life now than it was back then. I thought I’d post it as a constant reminder not only to myself, but to anyone else, that things always get better... if you just look for the grace in the pain.

My therapist told me something I find extremely helpful. “Grace in it’s nature is undeserved-- it is an undeserved happiness and sense of peace from God that he wants us to have. Why do you constantly feel as if you have to DO something in order to deserve to be happy? Don’t you think that goes against the very definition of what grace is?”

You deserve to be happy simply because you breathe. Your human soul is what allows you happiness and joy-- it is our birth right. So claim it.

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I would bet all of the money in my savings account (read: none) that I have failed quite a bit more than most others this year. From the beginning of 2016 up until this very week, a black cloud of doom and gloom has seemed to follow me everywhere that I go. Two car accidents, three breakups, bombed exams, broken laptops, broken iPhones, forgotten payments, busted ankles, a cyst-filled face, and several episodes of ugly-crying in front of the TV later (Sorry Katie), I am still here but not quite the same.

Of course, I know how pessimistic this sounds- it’s the exact definition of pessimism! It’s easy to wallow in the doom (and believe me, I have), but through my repeated fuck-ups there is something I’ve learned by force: how to fail with grace.

Within the past few months at Children’s, I had my one-year work anniversary. It was a happy day for me, a source of self-esteem and pride during a time when I had little else to feel positive about. I felt like I was actually allowed to tell myself that I knew what I was doing for once. But my first year was filled with more mistakes than successes as I threw myself bottoms-up into the obdurate culture of medicine. I knew how to sing to a filled auditorium, but I couldn’t hold a sick baby while feeding them so as not to occlude their airway. I could harmonize a melody, but I didn’t know what any of the alarms on my patient’s monitor meant or how to turn them off (let’s be honest: I still don’t know what all of them mean). I could memorize entire plays, but I couldn’t draw a priority sodium off of the rambunctious toddler in room 28. Suddenly every bit of knowledge I’d accumulated over a lifetime of being in the arts, something I’d considered my source of self-worth and the measure of all my success, meant absolutely nothing. To quote the illustrious wisdom of Drake, I was starting from the bottom.

I think that failure is God’s greatest tool for teaching humility and perseverance. I have learned, through the unforgiving hand of bad luck, that there is freedom in failure. There is forgiveness. There is liberation. There is joy. In being released from the expectations of others (and even more, the expectations of yourself), you finally come face-to-face with who you really are. You see yourself raw, without the shining of your achievements to illuminate you. You are thrust upon the foundation that built you. You discover what motivates you through the worst days of your life, what gets you up in the morning when you feel like you have nothing left, what takes the air into your lungs and lets you breathe for once in your fucking life (and no, the answer I’m getting at is not negative pressure in the lungs- but good try!).

Failure has taught me who I am. Failure has shown me that it’s okay if I need somebody to show me a couple of times how to feed that baby- and hell, even a fifth or a sixth time if it helps. Failure has humbled me to know that a number at the top of an exam has nothing to do with your worth or your passion. Failure has taught me empathy and understanding that I didn’t know I had. Failure has forced patience into my mind and into my heart, and given me the courage to try again for that priority sodium, to have faith in myself that didn’t exist before, to go for the high note without giving a single flying fuck if I actually hit it or not (I usually don’t, and that’s okay too). Failure has made me a better musician. Failure will make me a better nurse.

And now for the biggest cliché of them all, but it’s true: failure has made me a better person.

So as much as I’ve thrown up my hands and cried to the Father that made me, and as much as I’ve asked Him why, and as much as I’ve struggled to accept the reality He’s given me from time to time, I’ve also learned that it’s through this failure that He has redeemed me. Without the chains of everyone else’s expectations, I am free to live only for the things that give me life. I’ve learned what those things are. I wake up every day trying to put as much love as I can into this flawed world, because there is no “requirement” you have to meet for that. You cannot fail at love- you can only do it.

And if you live your life for love, there’s no way you can fail. No number, label, position, or person can ever take that from you.

Not even yourself.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Never rely on what you think you know. Remember the Lord in everything you do, and He will show you the right way (Proverbs 3:5-6)

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