Staring up at the slowly eroding wall of dirt it dawned on me that this was really turning into a colossal disaster. In fact, it was a masterpiece of a failure. Have you ever had a masterpiece failure? A masterpiece failure usually encompasses the perfect amount of bad decisions coupled with the perfect amount of mistakes and misjudgments and a dash of wicked happenstance for extra saltiness. This was one of those situations.
While I wouldn’t wish a masterpiece failure on anyone and would not take lightly any such story that anyone has experienced or is experiencing I do not now regret one of my own. What came out of it produced many things of beauty, and dare I say……. growth.
It all started in early 2005 when I saw a small “for sale by owner” sign in the bushes while driving my then 2-year-old son around at 10PM to get him to just go to sleep. It was a big piece of private wooded property in the City and it was very reasonably priced (maybe a little to reasonably).
The “property” was in one of the most beautiful and exclusive areas in our town. Nestled on the Southern wooded and hilly edges of the community we called home. The property felt like it was in country while literally being minutes from downtown. With the sun and wind in the trees it felt like a Northwest Paradise. What made it even better was that the homes in the area were all large beautiful custom homes with 2 acre lots. This added to the overall attraction.
We bought it …oh rapturous joy …we were are on our way to building our dream home on a dream piece of property. The summer of 2006. We secured our building loan, drew our plans, and planned to General the job ourselves (as I had grown up in construction I had a general idea of the process). We broke ground in July of 2006 and slowly prepared our land for the foundation. Then it happened.
Have you ever been sideswiped, sucker punched, or just plain sickeningly surprised?
Well we were! After months of preparation and a very large sum of money and debt accrued we found upon excavation that the property was sitting on an “ancient landslide”.
By the way the Willamette Valley and most of western Oregon and Washington are full of them (just sayin). This of course changed everything.
We had to re-excavate, redesign a completely different house and the time that this took pushed us into the thick of the rainy season which brings me to standing in front of the rapidly eroding wall of dirt I started the story with.
Maybe you can relate to that feeling in your stomach, neck, chest, or back, when you realize wow this is really not good.
IN FACT, this is really awful and I can’t fix this. This was late 2006 and early 2007 by this point and some other events were happening in the US relating to the collapse of the mortgage market. Our bank backed out on us at this point leaving us with most of the bills for the excavation and dozens of other asundry services in our lap.
After 12 months of no movement in the process of building I was sliding deep into an anxious depression. My chest hurt everyday to the point that I went to Dr., worried that I was having heart problems.
Turned out it was stress.
We prayed and prayed, but it felt like it was just one of those moments where the only way out was to trust and move thru. I thought maybe I could see the light at the end of tunnel and hoped that it wasn’t an oncoming train. I slowly became consumed in the stress of trying to fix the problem while assuming all the bills with more debt. I lost all perspective.
One late night I sat out in the backyard and stared up at the sky, something that I started to do each night after this. I started to regain perspective thru looking at God’s creation. I realized that this was a small part of my life in the years that I would be alive and that I was small part of what I was looking at in the sky. I had been caught up in the sense of failure, the shame, and seemingly impossibility of the situation. The situation or more importantly my reaction to it was robbing me of what was valuable in my life such as my relationship with God, my family and even my vocation as a counselor.
God started to draw me back to reality thru his immensity.
I started to turn my focus back to what really mattered, and it took time.
In my brokenness I wanted to truly follow God’s design for our lives, but there were a lot of pieces to pick up. I felt stripped down and raw and that is where God met me.
Are you in the midst of a masterpiece failure situation?
Has a financial, relational, or vocational sure thing blown up in your face?
Are you in the position that feels Isolated, and alone?
The first and most important thing is that you should do is seek help! I stayed isolated and embarrassed way to long. God’s people are there to help shoulder the burden.
Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
The thing that you probably should not do is to isolate for long periods, stop doing healthy activities, or distract yourself with unhealthy activities that pull you away from what is important.
This may be professional help, it may be a church group, it may be a pastor. Most likely it will be a combination of people and groups that will help you regain your perspective and start to see how to move forward. In fact, God may open some doors in those relationships that you cannot imagine were possible.
It may seem a paradox, but I am glad to say that I can’t end this story with a quick fix miracle. The truth is that we made these decisions, mistakes happened, and part of the story did not go well, there were tears and struggle, but that was not the end of our story.
Thru this experience God was present to help us learn a great deal about ourselves, His grace and provision, and compassion for others. The “others” that I am referring to are those that find themselves in the beginning, middle, or end of a masterpiece failure.
2 years after the triumphant breaking ground and after being for sale for 6 months the neighbor bought the bare ground for the mortgage owed on it. This was the only offer in the midst of the worst recession since the 1920’s. The neighbor was only in town for one month and it was a take it or leave it situation. God was gracious and we sold it. 10 years later we have finally paid off the rest of the money we accrued in our magnificent failure and I don’t begrudge a dime of it. We struggled with the repercussions of the situation for years after and it took me over 5 years to even drive by the property without feeling horrible, but God is sovereign, and has created in me, and my family something special in spite of and because of this struggle.
God has revealed himself in ways that I may not have ever been open to sitting in my beautiful home on my beautiful property in my beautiful town.
I would not wish magnificent failure on anyone, but it seems that they can come whether we are prepared or not.
Sometimes it is someone else’s doing that has brought us there leaving us bitter and estranged feeling the weight of their failure impacting us! We are left to figure out those next steps.
Magnificent Failure can be the catalyst for transformation to have magnificent life. I do not say this lightly because there were many night, weeks, months, and years where I did not have the perspective to see living anything, but the failure. What it said about me, and my vision of the future was that I was a failure. I was not a failure….I was a person that had experienced a failure. That eroding wall of mud can be a metaphor for many things that happen to us as humans.
God has a desire for us to transcend even our most magnificent failures turning them into vehicles of newness and creativity. This is not a forced thing. I believe that God collaborates with us when we are willing to see a new perspective, experience pain, and move forward rather than avoid pain and stay stuck. Time will move forward and you can too.
Gene is Husband to the amazing Daleasha, Father to the amazing Daisy, Nate, and Silas, lover of Christ, licensed counselor, ordained pastor, writer, and artist. Gene is originally from Veneta, Oregon and currently resides in Washougal, Washington. As Therapist in both local Eugene agencies, as well as private practice for 15 years, and as a Lead Pastor in Springfield Oregon for 5 years ( along with many other church based ministry roles thru the years) Gene has a heart for those that are both in the spiritual and mental healing professions. As an artist Gene focuses on sculpture and functional art items that take up space and have to be noticed.
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