The second result came on a Tuesday morning by email, and you read it standing up in the kitchen, and then you went to work and did a full day and told nobody.
Twice.
You are not a person who fails things. That is the part that is hardest to say out loud without it sounding like arrogance, and it is not arrogance, it is simply a fact about the previous thirty-one years of your life.
Two marks the first time. Nine the second. The gap did not close the way work is supposed to close a gap, which is the thing that has kept you awake since March.
The third sitting is booked for the spring. You booked it four days after the second result, at eleven at night, which in retrospect was not a decision so much as a reflex.
And two people have said something since. Your brother, who is not gentle and who loves you and who said it in one sentence at a family thing. And your wife, later, at home, more carefully, who said that she does not mind either way and that she minds what it is doing to you.
Neither of them said you were incapable. Both of them said the same thing underneath, which is: at what point does this stop being perseverance.
You do not have an answer to that. You have been carrying the question since March and you have been carrying it alone.
The verse includes the falling
There is a couplet in Psalm 37 that people quote for the first half.
The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.Psalm 37:23-24
Read the second verse carefully, because it is doing something unusual.
It does not say the good man does not fall. It says though he fall, which means falling is anticipated, written into the description, and not treated as the moment the ordering stops.
The steps are ordered by the Lord, and the man still falls, and both of those are in the same passage without any tension between them.
That is not a small thing for somebody who has failed a paper twice and has begun to read that as evidence about whether he was ever meant to be doing this.
You are being upheld in the middle of the falling, not after it. I am not putting my own idea over you here. Scripture says though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand, Psalm 37:24, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a thing a person can lean on in a kitchen on a Tuesday morning.
Your brother is not the enemy
Put this down first: he is not against you.
He said it in one sentence at a family thing because that is how he says things, and because he has watched you since March and he cannot see the inside of it and can see the outside of it very clearly.
And your wife said the truer version. She does not mind either way. She minds what it is doing to you, and that is not an opinion about the exam at all.
We are not making opponents out of the two people most likely to be standing there in the spring whichever way it goes. There is a version of this page that hands you an argument for the next family thing, and it would be satisfying and it would be a bad trade.
You have not been asked to choose between hearing them and sitting it again. Scripture says in the multitude of counselors there is safety, Proverbs 11:14, and the Holy Spirit is as free to use a blunt brother as a verse.
The part where I would say stop
Let me be honest, because a page that only encourages is not much use.
If the third attempt is money the household actually needs, that is a real consideration and it does not make you a coward to weigh it.
If the studying has taken every evening since March and your wife is watching a man she does not entirely recognize, listen to her, because she is the one with the clearest view and she has no stake in the outcome except you.
And there is a harder question. Are you sitting it because the work is genuinely yours to do, or because failing twice cannot be allowed to be the final state of a man who does not fail things?
That second one is pride, and I do not say that as an accusation, because it is the most understandable pride there is and almost everybody who has ever been good at something carries it.
But it is a terrible reason to sit an exam, and it will not survive the spring either way.
You are not required to prove anything by sitting it a third time. Scripture says a bruised reed shall he not break, Isaiah 42:3, and the Holy Spirit is not standing behind you in a study at midnight with a clipboard.
The part where I stand with you
And here is what I will not let stand.
Twice means you cannot is a conclusion, not a fact, and it has been dressed up as a fact by the arithmetic of two.
Two is a very small number. You have no information about why the gap did not close, and neither does your brother. It could be method, it could be the sort of paper it is, it could be that you sat the second one nine weeks after the first while working full time, which is a fact everybody has quietly stopped mentioning.
None of that tells you what happens in the spring. It also does not tell you that you cannot. Scripture never made two results a ruling, Psalm 37:23, and the Holy Spirit has not treated them as one.
You are not standing on two results. Scripture says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and He delighteth in his way, Psalm 37:23, and the Holy Spirit does not read a man off a mark scheme.
You have been carrying a question since March, which is at what point this stops being perseverance, and it is a fair question and it has been eating you because you have been holding it alone.
Scripture puts safety in a multitude of counselors, Proverbs 11:14, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to settle it alone. Take it to the two people who asked it. That is the whole practical content of this page.
Not to defend the spring sitting. To say the question out loud with somebody else in the room, because a question carried alone for five months turns into a verdict and a question shared for an hour turns into a decision.
And whichever way it lands, hear this. You are held whether you sit it in the spring or let it go. Scripture says though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, Psalm 37:24, and the Holy Spirit has been upholding a man who has read two results standing up in a kitchen and told nobody.
Two papers cannot say what you are. Neither can a third one.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these standing in Christ, under the will of God, with no date placed on Him. Scripture gives the standing and the Holy Spirit carries the words, and the outcome is His, and He may answer in His own way.
- Two failed papers, you are results and not a ruling on the man who sat them. Scripture says though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, and the falling is written into that verse rather than excluded from it.
- Pride that cannot let twice be the last thing said about a man who does not fail things, get out of this house in the name of Jesus. Scripture says a bruised reed is not broken by Him, Isaiah 42:3, and the Holy Spirit has never once asked me to sit an exam to settle a point about myself.
- Lord, You are the God who orders the steps and upholds with His hand, and my wife said she minds what it is doing to me. I am standing still in this room, and I am taking the question to them instead of carrying it alone since March.
Psalm 37:23-24
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