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“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” I’m not sure where or when I first heard that expression, but I know I was very young.

But what is the difference between success and failure? Isn’t failure merely a step on the road toward doing things better the next time?

A baby does not run a marathon immediately after exiting the womb. She falls down many times while learning to walk and later, to run.
An entrepreneur does not create a successful business without making a few rookie mistakes along the way.

Life is filled with failures. We are not going to do everything perfectly.

And these failures can feel like thorns that we wish could be removed. We focus on the negative aspects of those failures instead of recognizing the value they bring to our growth in our walk with God.

I am not talking about failure in the sense of continuous sin that we should repent from and allow God’s transformation to remove from our lives.

Rather, failure is a mistake along the way. We were walking in the light, but we tripped up or stumbled. Our best effort wasn’t quite good enough. We would’ve done it better if...

Yet, the thorns of failure can be a blessing. Just as thorns protect the rose and a part of its growth process, our blessed thorns of failure can protect us from pride and other sins that entice us.

I invite you to consider four blessings from the thorns of failure:

1. Failure makes us compassionate.
Guess what? No one else gets it all right either! We all have different gifts, talents, interests, and passions. It is okay to not be good at everything. We value other people’s contributions when we recognize their strengths and our weaknesses. We more easily forgive when we realize all we have been forgiven (Matt. 18).

2. Failure helps us learn.
Alfred asked master Bruce, also known as Batman, “Why do we fall?” The answer: “So that we can learn to get up again.”
Onesimus experienced this when Paul recommended him to his former owners after having been useless to them previously (Philemon). Onesimus had learned from his mistakes and grew, as a person, a servant, and a Christian.

3. Failure is only one chapter in the book of life.
“One should not judge the book of someone’s life by the chapter just walked into.”
God is a God of forgiveness and redemption. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. And He does not look at us through the lens of our failures, but rather through the redeeming blood of His Son. Our identity is not that of sinners, but as redeemed children of the Father. Yes, Peter betrayed Jesus, but that was not what defined him, because...

4. God is bigger than any failure.
The book of Genesis (or really the entire Bible) can aptly be subtitled “God specializes in working through failures.” He is best glorified through our shortcomings, our inabilities, and our missteps. He longs for us to ask for help in our weakness, for then it is His strength we rely on (2 Cor. 12:9).

Today, as we close out the month looking at our #walkwithGod, I encourage you to take a moment to thank Him for the blessed thorns of failure. And also, to take time to share in the Common Threads with a Christian sister, an Iron Rose Sister. Even if the failure you wish to remove is a sin, don’t let it define you. God is the God of second chances... Just ask Paul.

• guest writer
• walk with God

Walking with God through the Most Difficult Moments

My name is Carole Gastineau. I am married to Zane Gastineau and we live in Searcy, Arkansas. We have two children. Our youngest child, our daughter, is married and lives in Kansas. Our oldest child is our son, Isaac. Isaac is no longer with us. On April 28, 2012, Isaac died from a rare form of Leukemia. He was diagnosed in October of 2011 and he died in April 2012.

That one event has defined my walk with God, hard. This was not my first experience of losing someone I love to cancer. In June 1991, my father died from cancer. I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter when my father died. My dad only lived three months after being diagnosed with cancer. My walk with God has been hard at times.

When my son was diagnosis with cancer, my first thought was “God, I have already had my turn with losing someone to cancer. Why, do I have to do this again?” I was in shock. We took Isaac to M.D. Anderson in Houston, TX, where Isaac and I lived while he went through the chemotherapy. My husband would come every week and stayed with us 4 days and then he flew back to Searcy and worked 3 days. My daughter was married and in college and she came every weekend that she could. This was our family life for 7 months.

Before this life-changing event, life was good. My husband and I were both raised in the church of Christ. We raised our children to be active and faithful members in the church of Christ. We praised God for our children and their decisions to remain faithful to Him. We were and still are a close family. We lived, loved and played together. We had fun in our family. We enjoyed being around each other (granted we did raise teenagers and sometimes they didn’t like each other or us) but overall we loved each other deeply.

I guess you would say we were a typical family, enjoying life, loving our church family and watching our children grow up and all of us growing in our faith. Then that October day came, when Isaac was diagnosed with cancer and my life changed forever.
On Monday, April 22, 2012, Isaac was in the hospital and the week before we didn’t know if Isaac would live through the week. He had been in ICU in a coma, but he pulled out of it and we were moved back to a regular room.

That Monday morning, I woke up and took my husband to the airport so he could return to Searcy. I returned to the hospital and around 8:00 a.m. the doctor came to Isaac’s room and he told me “I promised you that I would come to you and tell you when there was not anything else we could do for your son and that you needed to take your son home.” I had to then wait for my husband’s plane to land in Little Rock so that I could call him and tell him he needed to come back to Houston so we could take our son home to die. I was all alone in Houston, no one to sit with me, only me and God.

My husband couldn’t return until Tuesday, so I spent the day holding Isaac and crying because I knew my time with him was quickly coming to an end. I continued to pray for a miracle. I asked God again and again to heal Isaac.

Then I remembered the scripture in Isaiah 57:1, “The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.” I then could say to God, “If there is a future evil that may cause Isaac to lose his faith, then by all means, take Isaac now because I know his heart belongs to God.”

I wrote a blog while Isaac was sick, and I wrote every day and I ended it by saying God is good, God is always good no matter what and God is faithful to all of His promises. That is what I hung onto every day. I knew God loved me and He loved Isaac and God would do what was best for us.

I was thankful for the verse from Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” I could do that. I could take on each day and do what Micah 6:8 said to do.

I was blessed to be with Isaac every day for 7 months. Isaac had many favorite verses, but the one verse that sticks out is Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” That verse sticks out because Isaac struggled with that verse and he and I spent a lot of time talking about that verse. Many precious conversations were started between Isaac and myself based on that verse. But, we never stayed focused on that one verse, he would talk about God’s promises and he would talk about heaven. Those are precious conversations that I hold close to my heart.

It would not be fair for you to get the impression that I walked through this with strong faith and never wavered. I did waver. I struggled daily with the question “Why doesn’t God answer my prayer to heal Isaac?” I know that God heals people! I had witnessed people being healed and doctors saying, “We can’t explain what happened, but he/she is healed.” Why wouldn’t God answer my prayer? And my answer is I don’t know. I still struggle with that question.

After Isaac died, I was looking for a way to draw me back into God’s Word. I had discovered Bible journaling on Pinterest. That is drawing pictures to illustrate scriptures or stories that are in the Bible. It is a way to record your feelings in your Bible or to record your feelings in a journal. So, I committed Bible journaling a scripture every day during the month of June. I did it! And it did draw me back into God’s Word. It also allowed me to communicate, with God about how I was feeling spiritually, through drawing, writing and coloring. And, because I was in God’s Word, God spoke back to me.

Isaac was 24 when he died. He was in the Army National Guard. He was attending Harding University and had finally decided what he wanted to major in. Isaac had dreams about how he was going to serve God. All that ended on April 28, 2012.

My life will never be the same. Part of me died when my precious Isaac died. But I can still say without a shadow of a doubt that God is good, God is good no matter what and God is faithful to all of His promises.

Thanks for listening to part of Isaac´s story, about his walk with God, and some about my own walk with God, as well.

#IronRoseSister #walkwithGod #Godisgood