By Ife J. Ibitayo
A good friend of mine moved away earlier this year. We’d gone through so much together. I remember weeping with her on the chapel floor when she felt distant from God. I prayed for her when she quit her first job and stepped out in faith. But when she threw a going away party the week before she left, I kept my distance.
I was trapped in my head, tormented by voices that lied that she wouldn’t want me there anyway. As I lay on the wooden floor of my apartment, sicker than I’d ever been in my life, I didn’t know if I’d see any of my friends again. By the time my health returned a few months later, she was already gone.
However, later this year, I decided to return to basketball after a three-month hiatus. To my amazement, I ran into her at the gym. As we hugged each other, I couldn’t believe that she was real. I finally had my chance to give her a proper goodbye.
Blowing My Chance
I’ve been a perfectionist for a very long time. I’ve always wanted to say just the right words and do just the right things because I feared suffering irreparable consequences if I didn’t. In the words of the great sage Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” There is no “trying”. There is only success or failure, and anything less than an A+ is utter failure.
As it turns out, doing everything right all the time is not a sustainable way to live, especially when the stakes are high—such as running a company and trying to graduate with an MBA as I was. When my health began to fail—physically, mentally, and spiritually, I assumed that my entire life would fall apart. I saw myself getting kicked out of my program, running out of money, and living out the rest of my days on the cold streets of Los Angeles. But somehow I graduated with honors and am currently clothed, housed, and in my right mind.
Speaking to my therapist, I described the experience as falling into a giant comforter. I thrashed about as I plummeted through the sky, but something caught me and guided my descent down. It was only later that I knew that “thing” was God and that that comforter was grace.
Conclusion
There is a well-known concept in Christian communities known as “divining the will of God.” We don’t want to end up in His “permissive will” rather than His “perfect will” or, God-forbid “outside His will”. We have to get it right every single time: We have to marry the right person and choose the right job and have the right creamer with our coffee or we just might miss the amazing plan God has for our lives. But God knows that we are screwups for life. The Scripture itself says, “We see in a glass dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). And as we bumble around, making errors left and right, God remains unfazed. He will lead us back to where He wants us to go and back to the people He wants us to see because He is the God of second, third, and fourth chances.
“But [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest of me.”
(2 Corinthians 12:9)