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One of the most curious aspects of my life has been my journey towards realizing that there is no such thing as having everything “all together.” No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I work, it is something that seems impossible to achieve.

And for a pretty large chunk of my adult and adolescent life, this feeling of inadequacy constantly wore me down. Even on my best days, I realized that there was always something missing. Whether that something was something tangible like a loved one, or whether it was something that I couldn’t see, like the feeling of shame, I always found—and often still find—myself cocooned in the feeling of being a lackluster human being.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that life is one big lackluster story from the human perspective. Even the greatest triumph is often followed by an eventual defeat. This world that so easily seems like it is full of timeless victories can also be seen as a world of infinite failures.

The good news, though, is that our failures have already been accounted for. Though we may claim victory in the moment, it is only that—victory in the moment. The only way to gain true victory is by trusting God and His word.

Trusting in God doesn’t mean that you won’t feel like a failure—actually, it will probably make you feel like an even bigger failure than ever before. But, it does mean that there is something on the other side of your failure. Something that while you cannot see it, it is ever present and ever real.

It seems to me that the Christian life could be described as such:

A life mired by constant failure, brought victorious by the One that paid it all: Jesus.

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