"Failure"

There is a lot more to the story that I posted the other day, but it would have been way too overwhelming to write everything down in one post.  I think it will have to come in bits and pieces as we process everything more and see where God is leading us.

Something I've thought about a lot over this whole journey has been failure.  At first, I was worried about what other people would think when they heard we were selling our cows.  I thought it would seem like a big failure to them.  I could just picture some people laughing and whispering behind our backs about us not being able to make it in a tough dairy economy.

But here's the thing about failure.  Maybe we're too quick to call something failure when the Lord has another name for it; His leading.  Maybe failure is His way of directing us away from something that might seem good in the short term, but in the long run isn't His best plan for us.  And only through the difficult process of "failure," will we grow in the ways and areas that will make us more like Him.

One of my favorite podcasts that I've ever heard is a series by James MacDonald called When Life Is Hard.  Our veterinarian introduced it to us a couple of years ago (thanks Bridget!!).  One of the things that James MacDonald talks about is the difference between trials and consequences.  In life, there are consequences for our actions, for example if you rob a bank, you could go to jail if you are caught.  That is a consequence, not a trial.  He says that Christian men and women go through difficult trials to display "the superiority of a life lived in Christ."  Our choices, thoughts, and actions through a trial will display where we are rooted and display the reason why we can ever bear up under that trial.  We have hope in something more than our jobs, our dreams, and our goals in this life.  And that is the reason that we can keep going, trusting that the Lord will work out His specific plans, trusting that He is good even when it doesn't feel like it, and trusting that there is so much more that He has for us than our little human brains can ask or imagine.