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It is unusual for me to recall my dreams when I wake up. But at 2:34 a.m. I woke from an incredibly vivid dream. A dream so specific I—in my jolted out of sleep state—jumped online to find out if my dream was true.

It wasn’t. But it kind of was.

In the dream I was telling a friend about my puzzlement over how I see hawks perched on streetlights over the freeway multiple times a week. I might have had a dozen hawk sightings near home in my first thirty years of life, so it intrigues me that in the last few years I’ve noticed a proliferation of hawks in suburbia.

Then in this dream conversation my friend said, “You know there’s a Bird Watcher’s Bible, right?”

As in a study Bible all about birds . . . I did not know. I pictured a large, leather-bound Bible with bird illustrations and statistics and habitat ranges in the margins next to the passages with bird references.

And that’s when I woke up.

I spent two-and-a-half seconds trying to figure out what awakened me before I googled “bird watching Bible.”

The first three entries were for National Geographic Bird-watcher’s Bible: A Complete Treasury. Close, but so not what my dream implied.

Then I scrolled down the first page of results and found a blog dedicated to “Birdwatching from a Christian Perspective” with sections such as Birds of the Bible, Bible Birds, Orni-Theology . . . even multiple posts about hawks.

Stunning.

At a respectable time of morning I resumed my search and found a number of books written about birds mentioned in the Bible,* as well as bird-watching guides for modern Israel. My casual ornithological interest is piqued.

I still don’t know why I see hawks surveying freeways . . . but birds in the Bible? Each sparrow and ostrich is significant.

*This dream was seven months ago. Being me, I obviously bought and read a couple of those books. One of them (An Eye on the Sparrow by Sally Roth) was fascinating! She’s a naturalist and a birder who threw herself into the research on Bible translation and original languages as well as migratory patterns of birds in the Middle East to figure out what birds the biblical authors really were writing about. I have a hunch she was trying to prove the Bible was inaccurate, but instead she proved the smallest details are laden with significance. It’s one of the most educational (both ornithologically and biblically) and most fun books I’ve ever read . . . and that’s saying something.

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January 20, 2016

failure?

My eyes skimmed the post until they caught these words: “Failure…implies an end. An end to trying. An end to worth.”[1]

I stopped.

My fear of failure is paralyzing. It threatens to sink me on my best days, and on my worst . . . on my worst it takes me places I should never go.

I re-read the words.

“Failure…implies an end. An end to trying. An end to worth.”

They took me back six years. I sat in a counselor’s office and choked out how I had failed and was failing. Then he handed me a piece of paper and a pen. His directions were simple: write down every single time I’d failed. Every academic failure. Every athletic failure. Every relational failure. Every professional failure. Every personal failure. Every one.

I fidgeted as I stared at the paper. In my head, there were only two categories: perfect and failure. I slapped the label of failure on anything I touched that didn’t end in unqualified success. I careened between success and utter failure with no room for landing in the wide middle of acceptable.

But there wasn’t much to write on the paper. I hadn’t stopped trying. I hadn’t lost my worth. I hadn’t failed.

I hadn’t failed.

It was a stunning realization.

Months later on a spring day I gave notice that I would not be returning to my job as an elementary school teacher, and as I submitted my paperwork I pictured a different paper: the list of my failures. And I knew this moment—this ending—was not a failure. It was an end to a season, yes. But my skewed perception of success and failure did not win. My worth was in tact. I signed my name to the form and felt freedom, not failure.

It’s been six years. My fear of failure shadows me every minute. But it’s easier to call it out as a fear—a possibility—not an inherent reality. And now when it crowds against my shoulder or slips its icy fingers around my heart I can counter it with these words—”Failure…implies an end. An end to trying. An end to worth.”—and I have a hunch I’ll find I’ve not reached the end.

The words aren’t magical. The piece of printer paper handed to me in a moment of crisis was just processed wood pulp. But together they put language and imagery to my internal struggle. They offer a filter through which to screen my labeling of life—or maybe they let me peel the hastily applied labels of failure off the imperfect moments.

The conversations that played out so differently in reality than in my head? Not failures.

The jobs I didn’t get? Not failures.

The degrees earned not directly applicable to my current position? Not failures.

The slow, slow process of figuring out what I have to offer, what my contribution to the world is?

Still in process, still trying. My worth is intact. I am not a failure.

[1] Mulder, S. (2014). The Success of Failure [Blog] That’s Me- Susan Mulder. Available at http://susanmulder.com/the-success-of-failure/ [Accessed 3 Nov. 2014].