I found this past weekend that I passed my second CPA Exam! This was the “Regulation” exam, which is about 2/3s tax and 1/3rd law. 2 down, 2 to go!

I felt really good going in to this exam, but over the course of the exam I began to feel like I was doing increasingly worse. By the time I was done, I felt like I had just wasted my time and that there was no way I could have passed. I spent the next day feeling sorry for myself, questioning my life, career path, and thinking that I should turn this ship around before I sank in the middle of nowhere.

It took them one week less than two full months to grade this and get it back to me. It was a painful wait.

While waiting, God (though Bible study and a couple different sermons at church) brought me back around to coming face to face with the reminder that 1) Everything I’ve ever done/had/”earned” has been because God gave it to me and 2) I’m not going to move forward in life with any sort of the growth or success that I’m looking for unless I stay cognizant of the source.

That’s the tension that I seem to live life in most often. It’s the chicken/egg-esque logic argument that comes up around a test like the one I just took. I believe God wanted me to take this professional career path of the CPA certification. So what if I fail? Is it my fault because I didn’t study enough, or I’m not smart enough? Or is it His fault because if it weren’t for His direction in my life, I wouldn’t be doing this?

And back and forth I went for a few weeks, until I had enough and came back to the realization that as long as I hold on to my accomplishments–and failures–and try to “own” them as my own…I completely miss an opportunity for dependence on God in my life.

Oddly enough, the hardest part was giving up my failures. I think I feared that if I ever came to the conclusion that it is God’s fault that I didn’t pass this exam, then I would be either “let down” by Him or that it would show Him as “incapable” of passing a simple test that plenty of people pass every day. And so it just seemed easier to me, on some subconsious level, to step up and take full responsibility for this test, either way…because in my mind, somehow I was avoiding a potentially embarassing moment for God where I might actually lean on him and he might let me down. How nice of me, right?

Yeah, that’s a terrible idea.

I finally quit holding on to the idea that anything I had, past, present, or future, was “mine” or because of anything I was entitled to. After that, things got easier. And then within a week, I finally got my score.

When I got my score and saw that I’d passed with an even higher score than on the prior exam, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt the how behind such a seemingly impossible outcome. There is no doubt in my mind that God orchestrated it according to His plan and purpose. And of course, that gets me excited even more than if I’d passed it because I’d ‘earned’ it.