DAY TWELVE: Most Likely To Succeed?

My friend Eric and I met yesterday to finish talking about the Screwtape Letters.  It was actually the toast addendum to the proper novel, and it was spending a good deal of time and effort relating the concept that the demons wanted there to be no excellence among mankind.  That "all men are equal" would not be a virtue, but an excuse to view the exceptional as elitist and undemocratic, and for the normal joe to strive for mediocrity and not success.

This led us to discuss numerous things, not the least of which was the idea of success in our world.  Eric is a Ph.d candidate in education, and feels the pressure of success to be that he MUST reach the college level professionally and write tons of stuff that makes it in all the journals and be some big-time thinker in academic circles.  But, he wondered, what if real success is not to be known as that guy, but instead to be known as and remembered as a guy who loves his family and did right by them?

This morning, I was mowing my lawn and, since my best thinking often happens when mowing, I was pondering that conversation.  I felt that the very fact that at ten in the morning on a weekday I was at home mowing the lawn because I had no job was the very opposite of the world's view of success.  And I don't deny at all that the loss of a job- whether because of your fault or simply because of circumstances beyond your control- is a failure.  It is an anti-success.  I admit, calling myself a failure stings a bit.

Part of that is because in High School, I was voted Most Likely to Succeed.  Twice.

I realize that those things from High School carry less weight than a gnat on the moon, but that was a vital part of my identity back then, and even now.  I was the guy people expected big things from.  I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer- someone with plenty of money, nice home(s) and awesome cars.  I would be the guy that would never find himself fired, unemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck.

But I am.  And I have been all my adult life.  Well, not fired and unemployed, but lacking the other stuff and the paycheck to paycheck thing, definitely.

See, at some point in college, I decided (or felt called, if you're spiritual) to serve God.  I knew I would not join the corporate world or medicine (to be fair, medicine went out the window when I couldn't hack college Biology).  I knew that I would not have the material success the the High School Most Likely to Succeed winner was expected to have.  I would be viewed as a failure by many.

But I wouldn't be a failure.

And I am not a failure.

Except at being a tax collector, and I am OK with that.

Ministry life gave me a new kind of success.  I made a difference in peoples' lives.  There are students that got missed by everyone else that I was able to help for a season.  There are those people I talked with as Christ was talking to their heart.  There are young adults who as teenagers heeded a similar call to mine who I helped guide in some small way to serve teens, give years to rescue people half a world away trapped in lives that would make us shudder.  There are families that I sat with as their loved one passed away, and that I spoke words of comfort over as they were laid to rest.

Family life gave me another kind of success.  Each day I invest in helping to make two people become amazing human beings.  I see success in the way they become their own people- Leslie the driven athlete, Kenna the creative artist.  Both smart, both beautiful inside and out, both making it their world in their own way.  Each day I get to spend my life with Kristin, my perfect match, encouraging her and challenging her to be more than she thinks she (when I see so much in her).  And I get the benefit of her discretion and wisdom and hopefulness to balance my common cynicism.

Unemployment has made me successful at writing more.  Each day I sit before the screen and pour out my learnings for the day into this blog, I feel alive.  And though I often wish someone would discover my "amazing and inspired writings"  (that's my quote, no one else's) and I'd get to write for a living, I view the fact that I can write and draw joy from the act itself a success.

I pastor a church that is equipping college students to be what God intended.  Each time I sit with one of them and they share what new insight or question has arisen in their minds, I am refreshed.  Each time their passion for God is ignited, each time I see one of them pursue their vision for God's kingdom with success, I am a sharer of that success, if only vicariously.

I may not be the Most Likely to Succeed that my High School companions voted me to be, just like Eric may not be the success story typical of Academia- but we are still Most Likely to Succeed if we pursue the things that truly matter.

And I intend to do just that.