Lose

We each of us have a Simon waiting for us to lose because he needs to get close to God…

Christ Carrying the Cross with Simon of Cyrene (Giovanni Francesco Guercino)

I am a very competitive person.  I spend a lot of my time trying to work out ways that I can maintain a high enough standard to be considered the best.  I know – because I have been like this my entire life – that this can be very confronting for other people.  Sometimes others can feel very threatened by this constant pressure that I put on myself.  I have come to realise that the only way that such pressure as this causes issues is when the other person thinks that I am competing against them.  I am not.

When I compete, I compete against the one person who I know will challenge me – I compete against myself.  I set my own standard and then I work as hard as I can to try to achieve that standard.

People who are close to me – like my husband and my children – understand this.  My competitiveness does not threaten them.  Rather, it allows them to give me a bot of space and watch how things are going to play out for me.

I have been thinking about this today, because sometimes I fail against the standards that I set for myself, and other times I am a perfect success.  This variability in my results means that I cannot always predict how things are going to go, which means that it is very risky to back myself – in terms of success…  And this reminds me that there is one competition that I would not lose if I allowed God to compete for me – because “God does not lose battles.” (Friends of God, 214-215).

Perhaps it is an act of pride and wilfulness to rely on my own abilities?  After all, if God so chose, He could take those abilities away in an instant.  I could be diagnosed with a disease that would prevent me from functioning in a way that I am used to.  I could be involved in an accident that would prohibit my success.  I could experience loss and trauma that would prevent me from functioning as required to achieve the sorts of success to which I have grown accustomed.  And yet, those things have not happened to me.  Instead, I have been given a raft of gifts.  And I try my best – rightly or wrongly – to use those for God’s purpose.  This does not mean, I suppose, that I rely entirely on myself.  I know – for example – that should God chose to, all things would change for my GOOD.  I know that if God should chose to, my life could be very different.  But I also know, that if I go in and try my best and know that God is standing before me, I can follow His path and His direction.

And what does that look like in my day to day life?  Well, it looks like seeing that when something fails despite my best efforts it has failed because God chose a new direction for me.  There is nothing to mourn there.  Rather, there is only faith and hope in the confidence in God that everything can be turned to the GOOD.

Saint Therese of Lisieux wrote that we should never be afraid of failing, because Christ Himself fell three times on His way to Calvary – to SHOW me that losing is as important a part of the journey as winning.  After all, how would Simon of Cyrene have been able to get as close to God as He did without the failure of Christ to carry that Cross alone?

And it occurs to me today to think about that as I try not to lose.  After all, we each of us have a Simon waiting for us to lose because he needs to get close to God…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.