"Some of the very best lessons that God has to teach us are often missed because they come in the back door of our lives. They are sprung on us and we are not ready to take them in the particular package in which God delivers them, and it's easy to miss them. However, when we learn to wait upon the Lord and His timing, then we will begin to see things from the divine perspective. For example, FAILURE. That's one of the back door experiences in life because we are so success-oriented. It is our interpretation that every failure represents a waste of time, or a setback. When in reality, failure might very well be the avenue to teach us that special lesson which could never be learned without it: waiting upon God."
~From Tree of Lifes for 2000...
The last time I read this lesson, I applied it to large failures -- failure to sell the book, stay in print, acquire readers (none of which, I realize now, I have any control over). But this time I'm seeing it on a small scale: a daily occurrence in my life. That's what's been going on for some time with writing. I measure success by writing something that I will keep -- good, solid, material. Anything else is a degree of failure. I'm not producing! Me. I. But shift it on to Him: I'm to be waiting on His timing, not my own. And every day there is a failure it reminds me I have to go back to Him.
If the book was just writing itself, flowing onto the page smoothly, I'd not be learning a thing.
