Not All Failures Are Failures

​Yesterday, I wrote about failed marriage.

Failed marriage in a general sense.

Failed marriage in a much more personal sense.

After sharing my article, a sweet friend reached out to me and said, "I don't think you can call your marriage a failure when you have two amazing young men that are a product of that marriage."

I assured her that when I use the language "failed marriage" I am using cultural language, not mine. It is culture, not me, that quite often labels divorce a failure.

It is culture that can get obsessed with deciding what is success and what is failure, and placing those definitions upon each other in the form of expectations and burdens.

For the reality is, I know from personal experience and from stories I've heard along the way, that many people who are married are experiencing 'failures' within a the marriage.

Failure to communicate.

Failure to connect.

Failure to offer mutual respect.

Failure to know one another at all, or even desire to.

So no, limiting marital failure to divorce is a cultural reflection, not mine.

I had a conversation with an old high school friend last night. He and I hadn't talked in many decades. We were talking about the book I am finishing up - Demons Too Big To Hide: Living Life Under the Influence of Trauma.

My friend asked, "does writing a book like that make you feel a lot of regret?" I didn't hesitate to answer.

No. It does not.

Certainly regret pulls at you when writing a book like mine. Regret invites you to wish you had done things differently. But that is NEVER a possibility - to go back and do a single thing differently in life.

Therefore, regret in many ways is an evil invitation. It is always a false narrative.

I told him that I had never wanted to be a father, that my boys' mom and I committed to one another before marriage that we would never have kids.

Not ever.

Many years inside of marriage she changed her mind, and in turn, she changed mine.

This side of heaven, that changing of my mind is the greatest gift of my life. To be called dad is my most beautiful experience - I can't think of an experience that even comes close.

On top of that, the mom my boys have is a mom who wanted nothing more in this world than to be their mom. This dad who treasures his boys above all would not choose another mom for his sons.

So regret? Failure? No.

Life, all of life, it is an experience. It is much more useful for us to decide what we will do with our experiences going forward than it is to look back upon them and assign them labels.

My article yesterday was not nearly as much about assigning labels as it was about charting a path forward.

And additionally, my article yesterday was certainly not about regret. I learned too much about me in marriage that I was never going to learn outside of it.

Lessons that serve me well going forward.

Do I wish I could have learned those lessons otherwise?

No, because those kinds of wishes never come true, so what's the point of wishing them?

Life is an experience. Whether "Success" or "Failure" - the mission remains the same - grab the lessons and treasure the treasures within the experience - and keep going.

Just keep going, friends.