The Epic Fail

Epic Fail. This phrase entered my vocabulary via by teenage daughter. You may be familiar with the term. If not, let me give you a few examples.

Epic Pool Fail - My daughter's middle school class went to Washington DC this past spring. The kids had been preparing for this trip all school year and they were keyed up for the experience. When they get to DC and make their way to the National Mall they discover, much to their disappointment, that the reflection pools are empty. Draining the pools is something that is done on a regular basis. Unless this is your long awaited trip to see our nation's capital. Then it is nothing less than an epic pool fail.

Epic Prank Fail - I had a cabin of eight 3rd-5th grade boys at camp last week and a teenage Counselor in Training. I felt it is my duty to pass on one of the great camping traditions - the prank. Let me be clear, we were not going after any of the other campers. That would be cruel and unchristian. The teenage Counselor in Training of the adjoining girls cabin, however, was fair game. My CIT had found a plastic rat and we decided to let the boys place it in the female CIT's sleeping bag. Oh, the sparkle in those boy's eyes when we hatched the plot. The excitement, the expectation, the pure joy! It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. This is what church camp is all about.
So, on Thursday evening, after all the other campers had gone up to the dining hall, my boys got to work. We had lookouts, escape plans, and a well conceived prank. Problem was, she was not freaked out by the rat. No scream, no yell, not even a whimper did the female CIT make. This my friends, constituted an epic fail.

Epic fail is a term applied to activity in which people really try at something and it does not work. What distinguishes and epic fail from your run of the mill failure is the amount of expectation and energy put into the failed enterprise. Of course, like any phrase, it can be misused and overused, but I think it has value. Lots of things don't work, but some fail so badly they are nothing less than epic.

There is, however, another part to the epic fail - the epic redemption. You can't have failure without the possibility of redemption. And if something is an epic fail then that which redeems it must also be epic. In the Christian faith we have a word for epic redemption. Its called grace, and it comes from God. Grace is capable of taking even the most epic of failures and redeeming them. Epic redemptions happen everyday. There is no failure too big, or small, for God's grace.

Many of us have epic fails in our lives -broken relationships, addictions, jobs or businesses that did not work out. Some of those failures seem more than epic, they are life threatening. There is good news, my friends. For every epic fail there is an equally epic redemption waiting to happen. So take heart and know that even in your worst circumstance, your greatest blunders, your most epic fails, God's grace is hard at work. Thanks be to God for epic redemption.

My son spent the last two days trying out for a select soccer team. We won't know for several days if he made the team, but the whole process was a bit unsettling for me. I sat there both days (in the shade, I should note, while the poor lad was out in the sun and 85 degree heat) afraid. Of what? That he might fail. He is a decent soccer player, though I am not planning on him earning a living at the sport (which is too bad, because as a professional athlete he could provide me with a standard of living that I would not have a problem getting used to.) As he was running through his drills I wondered why I was so nervous, so protective, so afraid. So what if he didn't make the team? In the grand scheme of things would it really matter? Did the fate of the universe hing on his playing U9 select soccer?
Then I thought, does God feel the same way about me? Afraid that I might fail? I tried to image God sitting on the sidelines of my life anxious that I would not be good enough. Perhaps that is what God does, but I doubt it. See, God is all about redemption. There is nothing I can do that God cannot redeem. Yes, there are consequences for my actions but even if I fail at something God is able to take that situation and make new possibilities and opportunities. So what is there for God to be nervous about? And if God is not afraid for me, why do I need to be afraid for my son? Who knew you could learn so much about parenting from soccer tryouts!