The Failure Truck

When I started my first job as a pastor late last year, I knew that one of my biggest challenges was going to be learning how to manage my time. However, I knew that the war wasn’t going to rage across the pages of my calendar, but it would be fiercely contested entirely within the confines of my own heart. 

All my life, I grew up believing that I was lazy. From a young age, it was something that was reinforced within me and became a cornerstone of my identity as basic and immutable as my race or sex or place of birth. However, unlike my other descriptors, this belief was formed through the years, like a river carving a canyon. When I went to a specialized high school (selective school) but didn’t get As and Bs like my classmates, or take pre-med electives, or even show any academic interest, I told myself that it was because I didn’t have as strong a work ethic as my peers. I didn’t consider that I just did not fit into the Asian immigrant narrative. I was lazy. 

Whenever my aunts visited from Taiwan, they would tell me how smart I was. In fact, all the aunts and uncles at church ever did around me was say “很聪明”! I didn’t know at the time that that’s what you say to all kids. I even do it now to Abby. I wasn’t special. Nevertheless, I internalized it into a specific self-story. If I ever did anything wrong or failed at anything, it couldn’t be because I was stupid or lacking in giftedness. It was because I was lazy. 

One night, when I was in primary school, my dad took me to his office because he was working late and mom was out (I don’t remember where Andrew or my grandmas were that night). I had with me a sheet of arithmetic problems; three-digit multiplication and multi-tiered addition and subtraction. 495x723, 141+667+319 and stuff like that. There were maybe 20 to 30 problems in total. My dad said that I had to complete the entire sheet before we went home, but I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. There were too many problems. I can’t do it. It started getting really late. My dad was already done with his work. But he dug his heels in and so did I. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but I realized looking back, all my dad had to do was get another blank sheet of paper and put it over the worksheet, covering all the problems except for one. Show me the one-at-a-time steps. “Let’s just focus here, Daniel. Don’t worry about anything else, just do 7 + 9, and tell me where to carry the 1. Can you do that?” I was told that we couldn’t go home until I climbed this mountain, but 8-year-old Dan just needed someone to show him how to put one foot in front of the other. 

At some point in the night, my dad gave up. We just had to go. He made me an original-chicken-flavored Nissin cup noodles, and one for himself. It was far too late to get anything else for dinner. I didn’t finish the problems. My worksheet was immaculate. There wasn’t even so much as a pencil smudge on any corner of that pristine white piece of paper. I had won, and my dad had lost. But the events of that night became an anchorpoint for my entire life story. I wasn’t just lazy. I was so lazy that I didn’t get even ONE problem done. This is no ordinary laziness. I didn’t throw in the towel halfway, having at least given it my best shot. I never tried at all. Furthermore, the reward for my indolence was cup noodles and I get to go home. I learned that food and rest is what I get if I was idle enough. So it’s who I am. I am lazy. 

My entire life since that night has been one long, endless battle to atone for this, my existence-defining sin.

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to not be me. To be someone who rests when he’s tired and keeps the machine running when he knows he has to get stuff done and to be at peace with his own process. And to know yourself. And to back yourself. Confidently, because you know that you are you. To know that you can work “y” amount, but not “x” or “z”.

This is my gospel war. And I win some and lose some. And the trajectory is upward to be sure, but on this side of heaven, the sin that I do battle with is the lie that I am a lazy person and that’s all that I am and that it fundamentally defines my existence. 

Half a year before I moved to Sydney, I did a bike tour for fun. 44 miles down the Hudson River Valley, starting Upstate and ending in Midtown. It technically wasn’t a race, but if you went too slow, there were trucks at the end of the pack that would collect you and transport you to the finish line, because they had to open the roads back up by a certain time in the late morning.

I didn’t enjoy that tour at all. I still remember parts of it. The scenery was stunning, but the only thing on my mind the entire time was terror that I would be too slow and get eaten by the failure truck. I couldn’t savor it. Most of the participants had road bikes, but I had a heavy mountain bike with front-wheel suspension that was pointless on a paved road. Ironically I still popped a flat, and they had to transport me from one checkpoint to another to fix it. 

I just don’t want to get caught by the failure truck. I will run myself into the ground and lose everything else in my life if I have to. I can’t rest, because if I slow down too much, I’ll be lazy. If I don’t come up with the perfect fallen condition focus I’m lazy. If I say no to someone I’m lazy. If I don’t find a way to reference this journal article I’m lazy. If I don’t check in with that person for too many weeks I’m lazy. If I’m not perfect, I’m lazy. 

There’s no middle ground. Either the worksheet is completely done with no errors, or it remains blank. Before the last couple of years, I had never gotten anything between a Distinction and a Fail. Either I did it and it was amazing or I didn’t do it at all. If it’s not going to measure up to my impossible made up standards, then in my mind it’s a failure and so am I and the moment that happens, all the fight goes out because I’m already in darkness because I’ve already been consumed by the truck so why bother. 

I’ve never told this story before. It’s partly because I never had the time to order the narrative, and partly because it wasn’t really anyone’s business. But this weakness fuels my ministry. What does Satan accuse you of? I don’t know, and it’s probably different to mine, but you can trust that I know what it’s like to be afflicted. And you can trust me when I tell you that the gospel is good news for you. Because the gospel says that you’re okay. It says that the righteousness of God has been revealed, and it comes apart from the law, and it is found in the trustworthiness of Jesus, and it is for all who trust (Rom 3.21-22). And so you can rest. And you can stop fearing condemnation.