#fail fridays

So I’ve learned something about myself in the past few years.  I’m not in love with failure.  I am addicted to success.  Seriously, I’ll stress for days after sending an e-mail with a typo in it!!  I’m a reformed perfectionist…but it wouldn’t take much for me to fall off the wagon.  In an effort to ‘kick the habit’, I decided to adopt a new core value:  Celebrate Failure.

Get real.  I don’t even know what that means.  And I haven’t really done it.  I’ve still tried to keep my failings under wraps.  So when I decided to bring ‘Fat Tuesday’ to the blog, I also decided to adopt #fail fridays.  Each Friday, I’ll bring to the light one of those things I’ve tried to keep hidden.  Sometimes (probably often), it’ll be related to my weight-loss struggle — it seems to be the favorite place my failures like to camp out.  But it really could be a short-coming from anywhere.

So stay tuned…there are enough failures in my life to fill up every single day of this blog a million times over!

This week’s #fail?  Since, like Groupon, I don’t like secrets either, I’ll let you in on one of mine.

I’ve had this for 6 weeks…it’s still in the cellophane.

Maybe I should open it.

Fat Tuesday

I’m introducing a new feature to my blog.  Fat Tuesday.

It’s because I’m fat.

Last summer I wrote an article for a new magazine called Unfiltered.  The magazine is a view of the youth ministry life outside the church walls.  My article (on the struggle to lose weight) garnered some attention….and I was offended.  I know, right?  Most authors love it when their musings get noticed.  But I was a little mad.

I have written LOTS of stuff on youth ministry.  I’m passionate about it.  I’m pretty good at it.  And I love investing in the youth ministry community!  So I was a little trepidatious when the editors asked me to write something on weight struggles.  It took some time to get something on the page, so finally I just threw in the towel and stopped trying to write a ‘good’ article…and I just wrote.

With this article, I was writing about something I was NOT passionate about.  I was writing about something I hate about myself.  I was writing about something I have failed at for 40 years…and this wasn’t a success story from which anyone could really benefit.  My publisher and editor were reveling   My youth ministry colleagues were complimenting.  Even my wife quietly assured me that it was the best thing I’d ever written.  And I was heart-broken.  I wanted my most revered writing to be about youth ministry, not my huge and clearly visible failure.

That being said, the article forced me to face some areas of my life that are not shiny and pretty and perfect.  And the article became cathartic for me…for a while.  I began to rewire some of my thinking.  I started losing some weight.  I began a journey to wholeness.  I thought it was a game changer.  I was wrong.

It was a strong first half (or whatever those sports analogies are for starting out strong…I’m not really a sports guy.)  But the game is still being played.

And as I was evaluating my blog, I realized that I do not write ministry stuff here because I’m an expert or successful.  I write about it because I’m still in the fight.

And so I introduce to you Fat Tuesday — not because I am an expert.  But because I’m still fighting.  You’ll find some of my personal journey here each Tuesday.  Sometimes pithy.  Sometimes raw.  Always authentic – because when we hide our weaknesses, we lose the game.