Missing the Mark & the Mercy That Follows

Dear Fellow Pilgrim,

Today, I came across the words of another pilgrim—though perhaps I should simply say another human being, because sometimes that is enough. His words were raw and aching, heavy with the terrible fear that he was not growing better, but worse. That he was not walking toward the Light, but drifting from it. That no matter how hard he tried, he would never become what he was meant to become. And I felt his sorrow. Not from a distance. Not as one who studies pain from the safety of a clean room. I felt it because I know that ache. I know the whisper that comes when the soul is tired and the failures feel too familiar: You will never be holy. You will never get this right. You are only becoming worse. Perhaps you have heard it, too. Perhaps you have stood there, dusty and ashamed, staring at the long road ahead and wondering whether every step forward has only revealed how far you still have to go.

The road to salvation is not smooth. It is not effortless. It is not a clean, shining path where the faithful glide forward untouched by weakness. It is full of stumbling. Full of falling face-first into the dust. Full of rising with scraped knees, trembling hands, and the same old sorrow in the throat. There are days when the soul looks at itself and sees only what is unfinished. Only what is still selfish. Still impatient. Still afraid. Still curved inward when it longs to be opened wide. And yet—this is not the end of the story. Righteousness is not the absence of falling. It is the grace of getting back up. Again. And again. And again. It is the refusal to make a home in the dust simply because we have landed there before. It is the continual turning toward the One who makes all things new. It is not merely becoming “better,” as if holiness were a polished version of the self. It is becoming love.

And love is the mark. Love is the picture. Love is the life we were made for before fear and pride and shame taught us to miss it. When I think of the final judgment, I notice something that pierces me every time. The question is not, “Did you never fall?” It is not, “Did you never struggle?” It is not, “Were your hands always clean, your motives always pure, your thoughts always obedient?” No—the dividing line is love. I was hungry, and you fed Me. I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed Me. I was sick, and you visited Me. The tragedy is not that they stumbled too many times. The tragedy is that they did not love. And suddenly the whole road looks different. The goal is not to become a person who can admire her own spiritual progress. The goal is to become the sort of person who recognizes Christ in the hungry, the lonely, the inconvenient, the wounded, the one standing right in front of her.

My husband once said something I have never forgotten: “God has purposed that a man who falls continuously but keeps getting back up should be called righteous.” And Scripture sings the same mercy: though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again. Not because falling does not matter. Not because sin is harmless. Not because wounds do not wound. But because the story is not over when the body hits the ground. The ground is not the grave unless we choose to remain there. Repentance is not panic. It is not self-hatred dressed in religious clothing. It is a turning. A re-orienting. A lifting of the face again toward Love Himself. It is saying, “I have missed the mark,” without also saying, “I am beyond mercy.” It is letting sorrow become a doorway instead of a prison.

This is where I must learn to see rightly. Not with the empty gaze of self-improvement, but with the sober tenderness of truth. When I fall, I must observe without condemning my whole soul. I must see myself as Christ sees me—not as a failure to be discarded, but as one still learning how to love. I must not live backward, dragging yesterday behind me like a chain, nor live forward in dread of every weakness that may come tomorrow. I must walk in the mercy of today. One step. One turning. One act of love. One honest confession. One small refusal to despair. And I must not waste my sorrow. If grief over sin only curves me inward, it becomes another form of pride. But if it turns me outward—toward God, toward my neighbor, toward humility, toward mercy—then even my falling has not been wasted.

I return often to an image I once heard: that the self we loathe so fiercely is not the deepest truth of us, but more like a temporary cloud passing over the sky. We look at our sins and they seem like mountains, immovable and enormous, casting shadows over everything. But Christ looks at them with the authority of mercy. Dust can be swept away. Clouds can pass. Chains can break. The east remains impossibly far from the west, and that is how far He removes what we confess and surrender to Him. This is the mystery that feels almost too good to trust: He forgives more quickly than we forgive ourselves. He loves more freely than we know how to receive. He is not surprised by the weakness we are so ashamed to admit. He knows the poor, shuddering machine we have been trying to drive, and still He says, “Keep going. Get up. Come back. Learn love.”

So I am beginning to see this season of my life not as a test of my strength, but as an invitation to return. Not a proving ground where I must finally become impressive. Not a spiritual performance where failure means disqualification. But a road back to the Mark I have missed so many times. Back to Love. Back to Christ. Back to the One who stood where we fell, rose where we could not rise, and now teaches us, by grace, to rise with Him. The point is not flawless effort. The point is not never falling. The point is learning, again and again, how to love when I would rather protect myself. How to serve when I would rather be seen. How to repent without despairing. How to rise without pretending I was never in the dust.

And perhaps, when I stand before Him at the end, the great mercy will not be that I can say, “I never fell.” I will not be able to say that. None of us will. Perhaps the mercy will be this: that every fall became, by grace, another place of return. That every wound became a place where Love entered. That every humiliation softened something proud in me. That every failure taught me to reach again for the hand extended toward me. Let it not be said that I never stumbled. Let it not be said that I never missed the mark. Let it be said, if mercy allows it, that I did not stop turning. That I did not stop rising. That I did not stop learning to love.