How do you feel about yourself right now? When the lights go off and you’re all alone, when you can take off the mask and stop the big pretend, how do you really feel about yourself?

Some people are amazingly confident and full of hope. But the rest of us resemble a crumpled piece of paper – worn out, tired, rejected, regarded as useless and an all-round complete failure.

We pretend, tell lies and try to laugh through our pain, there’s no point reaching out to anyone to tell them how you feel, they won’t get it. We struggle with feelings of permanent despair, fear and discouragement. We wake up every morning with resounding hopelessness topped up with a heavy dose of helplessness.

It’s bad enough when life pushes you down and people around you happily trample you deeper into the mud.

But the most heartbreaking scenario is when you are to blame for the pain you feel. You’ve sinned, you’ve messed up, you struggle with addiction, and you feel dirty and vile. You drink the bitter juice of regret and guilt. You are a failure.

I lied. You aren’t really. There’s a HUGE difference between Falling and Failing. Every human being falls by various, individual stumbling blocks. We all have secret sores under our masks. We’ve all made mistakes, both big and small. And we have all certainly sinned – pretty much everyone has struggled with a sin, or struggles with a sin that they feel too ashamed to tell anyone about.

Many of us have done things so grievous which we would prefer to keep it between ourselves and God alone. But we haven’t failed. We’ve slipped, fallen into old habits, followed the wrong path and hurt the heart of God. But we haven’t failed.

Failure is when the battle has been lost.

But it’s impossible for a child of God to fail; our Commander in Chief has already won the battle. When He said ‘It is finished’, He meant it. We all fall but what differentiates us from a person who has not accepted Christ is what we do about it. Are you going rise up even stronger or are you going to stay in the pit where you fell? It may hurt to rise up, you may be bruised and broken in some areas, but our Commander is also the Great Physician. He is more than capable to heal physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds. Even the wounds your sins have inflicted.

I’ve learned that in life the underdogs tend to laugh last eventually. Who would have ever thought the greatest persecutor of the church would write most of the books in the New Testament? I assure you that even Paul had no idea what God could do with his broken life. How can you comprehend the fact that a common prostitute from Jericho is listed among the four women who were the physical ancestors of our Lord Jesus Christ?

God has an amazing habit of using the weak to confound the wise.

If you are amongst those who feel super strong, I rejoice with you. But for us crumpled pieces of paper, the truth is that if only we could uncoil our pages, we would find that therein is a beautiful story of grace and rich mercy written by God with the blood of His own Son.

So don’t ever call yourself a failure. If God has not given up on you, you have no right or justification to give up on yourself.

“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall RISE; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.” (Micah 7:8)

Hi, I am Ireoluwakitan (a very long first name, I know 😉 ) and I am a 19 year old female law student in Staffordshire, UK. I am addicted and obsessed with God, in love with my family, attached to books and fond of dogs. I love music and writing songs, it is gives me great pleasure to form melodies and use words to glorify my Creator. I am very competitive with myself and strive each day to be a better woman than I was the day before. My ultimate goal is to hear the words “well done, my good and faithful servant”.