Already?

Here we are, less than one week into the season of Lent, and I have already missed a post.  I have failed in my mission to post something to this blog every Monday through Saturday during Lent.  What choice is left for me except to accept that I will never be good at blogging and just give up and move on to something else in my life?  To try to keep going at this point is pointless.

If this sounds ridiculous to you, congratulations.  That would be a very ridiculous attitude to take in this circumstance.  Interestingly enough, I have noticed this attitude a lot when it comes to not meeting expectations.  How many times have you heard people say things like, "I tried dieting, but I accidentally broke it a couple weeks in.  Guess I'm just not capable of dieting," or, "I missed my workout today.  This is proof that I just can't do it."  I know I've been guilty of those before.  Why is it that we sometimes admit defeat after messing up just once?

Failure is a part of life.  We will not succeed at everything we do. We will not get everything right on the first try.  Why do we have such high expectations of ourselves that we seem to forget this?  I believe Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."  Or perhaps it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."  Regardless of who said what, the message is quite clear.  Whenever we "fail", we should not simply give up.  Instead, we should learn from our mistakes and use that information to help us succeed in the future.

This is just another reason why I love the wording of the Baptismal Covenant portion of the baptism service in the Book of Common Prayer.  In this covenant, we make a series of vows.  One of these vows is to "persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord." -BCP p. 304 (emphasis mine).  We do not say that we will repent and return "if" we fall into sin.  We say that we will "whenever" we fall into sin.  This lets us know that, not only will we fall into sin (or fail in our duties to God), but also that we will fall into sin multiple times over the course of our lifetime.  Better yet, when we are asked to make this vow, we respond with, "I will, with God's help."   Here, we acknowledge that, even in our acceptance that we will fail from time to time, we will need to call on God to help us accept our faults.

With that said, I apologize to all of you who follow this blog regularly.  I have failed in what I had said I would do.  What will not happen, however, is me giving up on this blog.  I intend to keep going with the hope that I will not miss any more days.