Suffering & Hardship
I put years into something and it failed. I do not know how to get up and start over again.
“For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”
The proverb takes for granted that a just man falls, and not once but seven times. That is the striking part of it. The mark of the righteous is not that they avoid collapse but that they rise again, which puts repeated failure inside the description of a good life rather than outside it. Falling here is not evidence that you were never the right person for the work.
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;”
Paul stacks his phrases deliberately: troubled but not distressed, perplexed but not in despair, cast down but not destroyed. He is not describing a man who managed to avoid damage. He is describing someone visibly knocked flat who was not finished by it. He wrote this to a church that had begun doubting him precisely because his life looked so unsuccessful from outside.
A path forward
Write an honest account of what happened, including what was your doing and what plainly was not. Grief and a post mortem are different tasks, and mixing them leaves both unfinished.
Ask one person who was close to the work to tell you what they saw. You will overweight your own mistakes and miss the parts that were simply circumstance.
Before deciding anything about what comes next, spend two weeks praying about it without making the decision. Choices made from the floor tend to be about the fall rather than about the future.
Closing verse
“Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.”
- Micah 7:8
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