Failure—the Feeling Of Not Being Who You Want To Be - The Gift of Anger: A Guide to Follow Your Feelings in Prayer

The Language for Feeling like a Failure

I messed up. I missed my daughter’s school performance. She got in the car and wept. It was her moment to shine, and I missed it entirely. I can’t ever get it back. I can’t erase this memory from her mind that her mom didn’t show up when all the other moms did.

I feel as though I have let myself and others down. I wonder if I’ll ever get things right. I fear that I won’t. Who I want to be and who I actually am are at odds with each other. Guilt weighs heavy on me. Every area of my life is tainted with mistakes—motherhood, marriage, friendships, vocation, health, beauty, body. I hate that I can’t be the kind of person I want to be. Even with all my effort, I still fall short. My home needs to be kept up. Relationships need tending. Schedules need my attention. My reputation must be maintained. I can’t disappoint people. I can’t let anyone down. I strive. I hurry. I am always aware of what I have left to finish. I feel like a failure.

I am tempted to manage my feelings by trying harder. I power through. I feel the pressure to do more, try more, strive more. Even though it is hard, I listen to the pressure and respond by pressing harder. I am also tempted to respond by turning inward. I become self-critical and I turn my anger against myself: What’s wrong with me? I should be better by now. No one understands. It’s my fault. I am responsible for everything. I feel powerless. My soul is left fragile, exhausted, torn up, and bothered. This is where I am.

For a moment, I let my feelings of failure stay. It is uncomfortable to feel these feelings. I am afraid to feel the depth of my failure. It is so much easier to hide from it or hurry through it. I clench up; it’s hard to breathe. I’m not sure what else to do.

A Liturgy for When I Feel like a Failure

Breathe in—My Lord God . . .
Breathe out—hear my prayer.

I feel like a failure.

For a moment, I set aside strong voices that try to dictate my feelings.

Instead, I open my heart to You.

God, my soul needs care right now.
In my fragile state, I may be tempted to turn to anything else but You.
I may be tempted to defend or attack myself.
But I know Your presence with me is my greatest form of protection.

God, for so long, I have believed I couldn’t be loved in my failures.
My story is scripted by the pressure to succeed, the desire to conceal weaknesses, and the need to be strong.

You were with me when I wasn’t fully loved in my brokenness.

You saw that when weaknesses were exposed, I received wrath, shame, or guilt from those who were meant to care for me.
You know I had to be strong so that I could feel safe.

I want love.
I have sought unconditional love by putting conditions on how to get it. But the kind of love I really want can’t be acquired.
It can only come through accepting my limitations.

God, You welcome my weaknesses, but my weaknesses are extremely prickly for me to feel.
I wrestle with releasing the expectations I have for myself and my need for control.
God, I want to be God.

Yet, invite me into a new story.
A story where my feelings of failure aren’t to be tucked away but exposed by Your light of love.

You gently call my weaknesses to come out.
You funnel grace, compassion, delight, and love into my fragility.

Help me greet weaknesses, befriend them, and allow them to stay. I feel my failures sting me, prick me, bother me, and annoy me. But before I reach for self-correction or condemnation, I open my heart to You. Your faithfulness meets me in my failures and ushers in the freedom my soul so deeply yearns for.

As I embrace my limitations, I am embraced by Your grace. A grace that loves me despite everything I lack. Your grace sings over me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

You have not allowed me to fail as a way to punish me. You have given me a no in my life not as a prison, but as a place to discover Your presence. Accepting this no is an invitation to Your grace for the story You have given me, God.

Here, as Your grace greets me, I can give You thanks.

Living Word

Lord, I am listening.

2 Corinthians 12:8–10

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.