| God sent a perfect Son to take on all the failings of the entire world. He knew Jesus would get it right. — Amena Brown, How to Fix a Broken Record |
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I hate failure. I don’t care what all the business and leadership gurus say about the secret to failing well or how to fail forward or that failure is the secret to success. Let’s have an honest talk about this. Failure sucks. Nobody likes to lose. Nobody sits in the middle of the shambles of their life and dreams about the article or book they will write one day about how they rose from the ashes of this moment like a phoenix or how they like to write things that are full of cliché.
Failure is what it feels like when no amount of counseling or forgiveness can save a marriage. When every attempt at good parenting still produces a kid who stumbles down a path that seems to lead to nothing but more bad decisions. When you sink your life savings into a business idea that never found its wings to fly in the ways you dreamed of. When you fail out of school. When you’re fired. When you get laid off. When you break up, even though everyone thought you were the perfect couple. When you can’t afford to keep the house, the car, the apartment. When you make a mistake so colossal that the debris of your bad decision wounds everyone around you.
I don’t handle failure well. I am a recovering perfectionist. I am a classic oldest kid, trained to take care of everything and everyone. I am a church kid, raised to say and accept the good, convenient, Sunday school answers. I am Southern born and bred, trained to smile and be polite, even in the face of foolishness. The combination of these things makes me a prime candidate for holding my breath and holding it all together.
I was a good student, an overachiever. I liked school, and school liked me. Even though I haven’t been in school in years, I still look at my life as if each season is a semester that I must pass. I plan excessively. I try to control my environment. I don’t trust easily.
Failure isn’t something that happens to “those people” or something we can avoid by being good. It is not a grade we get to skip. Life is not a class where each choice, decision, or mistake will hand us a pass or fail, an A for perfection or an E for effort. It is not something our privilege, our money, or our pride can protect us from.
Like heartbreak, a bad hair day, or the flu, failure is coming for us all.
Failure doesn’t want to be our assassin. It wants to teach us the hard things. The aftermath of when we fail is life’s best X-ray. It tells us where we are broken, wounded, diseased. It tells us where we’ve been ignoring our hurt, our wants, our needs. It shows us who we are, who we’ve been, who we can be. Failure reminds us there is just as much strength in a beginning as there is in finding the ways to a new path when we’ve reached an unexpected ending.
Failure reminds us we’re human; we cry, hurt, and bleed. Failure humbles us. It reminds us even our best-laid plans and organized attempts at controlling life’s outcomes don’t control much of anything. It is failure that teaches us the dangers of pride and the grace of surrender.
Jesus knows we are going to fail.
He knows He will ask us to follow Him and we will choose ourselves. He knows He will ask us to pray with Him in Gethsemane and we will fall asleep. He knows He will invite us to join Him at the table and we will say we love Him and then betray Him. He knows we won’t always get it right.
God sent a perfect Son to take on all the failings of the entire world. He knew Jesus would get it right.
He knew Jesus could take all of these failed human beings and make it so we could be called righteous. There is no rock bottom, no personal disaster, no amount of utter failure where Jesus doesn’t walk with us.
Jesus invites the messed-up to dinner, to sit at His feet, to follow Him, to know Him, to be close to Him, to be loved by Him, to be forgiven, to grow, to be changed, to become more and more like Him.
Until we realize just because we’ve failed doesn’t mean Jesus calls us Failure. Until we realize Jesus loves us with the kind of love that refuses to give up.
Excerpted with permission from How to Fix a Broken Record by Amena Brown, copyright Amena Brown Owen.
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Your Turn
Has failure come for you? If so, then you are not alone. None of us sets out to fail and yet we cannot escape it. Does it feel like failure has named, claimed, and maimed you? If so, you are welcome at the table with Jesus. His love is yours no matter what. Come join the conversation! We want to hear from you about how failure didn’t cross you off Jesus’ list! ~ Devotionals Daily
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Free shipping with code JULYFS through 07/05 at 11:59pm CST
How to Fix a Broken Record: Thoughts On Vinyl Records, Awkward Relationships, And Learning To Be Myself
by Amena Brown
No matter how many scratches, breaks, or sorry repeats are in your past, you can find healing. In the soulful style of her acclaimed spoken poetry, Amena Brown offers humor, story, and a good dose of heart in How to Fix a Broken Record.
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List Price: $16.99
Sale Price: $8.50
(50% off plus free shipping with code JULYFS through 07/05)
Your soul holds a massive record collection: melodies, rhythms, and bass lines. Memories that ask you to dance and memories that haunt you in a minor key. Lies that become soundtracks to your days while truths play too softly to be heard.
Spoken word poet Amena Brown’s broken records played messages about how she wasn’t worthy to be loved. How to Fix a Broken Record chronicles her journey of healing as she’s allowed the music of God’s love to replace the scratchy taunts of her past. From bad dates to marriage lessons at Waffle House, from learning to love her hair to learning to love an unexpected season of life, from discovering the power of saying no and the freedom to say yes, Amena offers keep-it-real stories your soul can relate to.
Blending humor and personal experiences, Amena's stories are broken down into seven sections, including:
- Love and Be Yourself
- Dating
- Marriage
- Lessons in Adulting
- Ctrl+Alt+Surrender
- Home
- Searching for the Groove
The hurtful words of others and the failures of your past often determine what record you play the most in your mind. Those painful repetitions can become loud at the most inopportune time, keeping you from speaking up, pursuing your dreams, and growing closer to God.
Recognize the negative messages that play on repeat every day in your mind. Learn how to replace them with the truth that you are a beloved child of God. And discover how to laugh along the way as you find new joy in the beautiful music of your life. Learn more about the book.
About the Author
Amena Brown is an author, spoken word poet, speaker, and event host. The author of five spoken word albums and two non-fiction books, Amena performs and speaks at events from coffeehouses to arenas with a mix of poetry, humor, and storytelling. She and her husband, DJ Opdiggy, reside in Atlanta, GA.
What People Are Saying
"Amena Brown has been a good friend of mine for years. She is a voice in my life I trust because she means what she says and says what she means. Her words are laced with kindness and truth, honest reflection and humor. You’re going to find a lot of the things Jesus talked in this book, and you’ll want to do more than just agree with them; you’ll want to do something about them."
— Bob Goff, bestselling author of Love Does
"Amena Brown has a charming way of punching you in the gut while making you feel incredibly loved. It’s my favorite kind of human because none of us want to get apathetic, but how fun to be challenged by someone who loves us. Amena is a leader and a friend and a personal inspiration to my life. Enjoy this journey with her."
— Jennie Allen, founder of IF: Gathering and bestselling author
"Amena Brown has a way with words. Whether spoken or written in a book, she speaks to the soul with a knowing. She knows the humor in our humanity, but she also knows our hurts. And she always points us to a Healer. How to Fix a Broken Record is no exception. With characteristic wit and wisdom, Amena invites us into the highs and lows of her own story to help us reflect on our own. Most of all, she reminds us that the soundtrack of our lives can always include a redemption song. Grace has a groove to it, and this book will get you dancing once again. For Joy."
— Jo Saxton, speaker, author, cohost of Lead Stories Podcast
*Sale ends 07/31/20. Free standard U.S. shipping code vaild through 07/05/20 at 11:59pm (excluding Hawaii and Alaska). Sale pricing excludes ebooks.
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