Learning to Fail
I have always been horrible at failing. As a life-long, die-hard perfectionist, this is one thing I can fully and freely admit is one of my biggest weaknesses. Whether it’s saying something I immediately regret, not performing as well as I’d hoped, or deeply hurting someone I love, experiencing failure has the power to create deep, soul-penetrating, identity-shaking shame.
Often, our defeats are easier to remember than our successes. For many of us, memories which expose our inadequacies are vivid, sometimes invading all of our senses to the point where we can actually smell and taste our failure. Sometimes, a simple mistake can trigger a series of past misadventures, playing through our minds like an anti-highlight reel.
For me, the only thing worse than failure is when other people notice that I’ve failed … and they say something about it.
As a little girl, I set the same goal at the start of every school year — not to get in trouble. Ever. Just overhearing a tense conversation between a student and teacher was enough to inspire me to be a rule follower. I never wanted to be that kid in the hallway, summoned to make direct eye contact with my teacher as my faults were displayed.
Even as an adult, receiving feedback is an internal battle. The words, “Hey, I need to talk to you about something” have the power to send an electric current of fear and dread through my entire body. Intellectually, I know better. I know that constructive criticism is helpful, especially when it comes from those who love me and want the best for me. And yet, there is this part of me that immediately interprets feedback as betrayal. My knee-jerk response is to think, “If you really loved me, how could you do this to me?”
I have spent so much time and energy trying to outrun the reality that I’m not perfect — that I can’t perform or achieve my way out of my mess. And yet, the truth remains. My struggle to fail well has caused a lot of damage in my relationships. My defensiveness, blame, and inability to change long-standing patterns have wounded the most important people in my world.
What I am learning is that this is ultimately a spiritual problem. Many of us wrestle with this hard-wired, false message inside our souls: that we are acceptable when we do things right and a disappointment when we don’t. It’s easy to project this image onto God, seeing him as an intimidating presence with a giant scorecard, ready to send pain and withhold blessing because we’ve messed up yet again.
My heart wants to hear, “It’s okay to make mistakes. You’re only human.” when it’s exposed and ashamed. I want to move on like nothing happened as quickly as possible. And while those words feel good in the moment, they only last as long as it takes to commit my next offense.
We have a God who offers something far better than “It’s okay.” We have a God who sees us for who we truly are — failures and all. He doesn’t ignore our darkness, he absorbs it by taking it upon himself. We are accepted when we get it right and still accepted when we get it wrong because of what He has done for us through Christ.
Lately, I have been considering some questions. What would it take for me to be so rooted in the acceptance and love of Christ that I not only receive criticism well, but welcome it? What if I began to regularly ask those in my life how I could love them better and took tangible steps toward change?
If we want to fully embrace our roles in God’s story, we need to trust the words of those who see the parts of us that we can’t. Here, the sting we feel when our sin is exposed becomes for us a reminder of this: the grace that rescued us is the same grace that won’t rest until we are formed into the people we were created to be.
