Failure

Here's what failure looks like today:

My darling one-year-old has a few chipped teeth, and it happened on my watch. I had her out of the bath and she made a lunge back toward the tub and caught the edge of the tub with her teeth. My perfect baby is no longer perfect, and I'll always blame myself.

I got a call from the four-year-old's preschool 25 minutes after preschool ended saying, "we still have Bradford here." Um, yeah, I thought my mom was getting him. Miscommunication, resulting in me looking completely inept.

There are probably countless other failings in the way I treated my kids before they left for school. A hurried, nagging word. A missed opportunity to say something uplifting.

And so I read these words...

"Therefore, brothers [sisters], since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:19-23

I love those verses because they remind me that my confidence is not in myself, it's in Jesus. He washes me clean of every failing. He has given me something to hold on to--a secure hope founded on the unchanging, eternal, perfect character of God himself. On these days when the failures seem to outweigh any good I've done, I can rest. He takes me into his very presence and whispers sweet words of forgiveness. Of second and third and tenth chances. Of confidence in the woman and mother he is making me to be. He who promised is faithful.