Failing Successfully: Part 2 of 4

Cute Little Failures

I am very fond of my kids.  I want them to avoid mistakes and pains and yes, failures.  I want them to avoid wearing hammer pants and side ponytails or whatever hideous fads crop up in their youth, and I want them to choose good friends and I want them to never smoke.  I also want them to be girls who think of others first, fear God, and act with integrity.  And I think the best way to sabotage these character goals is to cushion them from all the bad stuff in life. 

If failure builds character in you and me, imagine how crucial it is in our kids’ formative years.  We can let them quit soccer because their coach plays favorites.  We can finish their papers for them because they need that A to get into Stanford and become really, really rich and happy.  We can fight their battles and give everyone a participation trophy and coddle their fragile egos.  And…we can create a fear of failure at best, a bubble of Unreality at worst, by shielding our kids from the opportunity to fail, to compete, to lose.

Parenting, I think, is less about making the world sparkly and pretty for our kids, and more about providing a secure place for them to land when they fall.  Songbird tried monkey bars this week for the first time.  When she couldn’t hold herself up, she said, “Mom, I tried to be a big girl but I couldn’t!”  Which was an interesting way to generalize such a minor failure.  I don’t think her little psyche suffered greatly; she wants to try again next week. 

If we teach and train and guide our kids, they will still occasionally mess up, fall off the monkey bars.  And when they do, and we still love and teach through the failures, we show them a picture of what Jesus does for us.  When we coddle and cushion, I’m not sure what picture that paints, but I don’t think it’s Jesus-y.  

When I was in high school, my mom used to ask, “Why do you put so much effort into basketball when you’re much better at tennis?”  Four knee surgeries later, after I’d ruined any tennis possibilities with my basketball injuries, I saw her point.  She made me go to one tennis camp for every basketball camp I chose.  She never told me I was great unless I really was.  And though I was no nationally ranked player then or now, and have hideous knee scars, I’m ok with that.  Childhood is not about crafting a perfect adulthood so much as crafting an adult, even a scarred, unranked one. 

If I develop anything in my kids, I hope it’s not a sense that I will break rules for them, that they are the center of the universe, or that their Class-A bilingual preschool defines them.  I hope instead to develop in them a work ethic, a sense of empathy, the ability to fail graciously.  Humility, even.  I hope they learn the joy of earned success, even if it’s first through earned failure.  If they never master the monkey bars, I hope they still become Big Girls.  And if they end up really good people with really mediocre resumes, I’ll be ok with that, too.

Failing Successfully: Part 1 of 4

"If at first you don't fricassee, fry, fry a hen."  -Carol Ryrie Brink in Caddie Woodlawn

Let’s cover a topic on which I can speak with some authority.  I have a long record of personal failures.  I’ve also, therefore, had a lot of opportunity to ruminate on the whys and wherefores of failing.  This series is the result of all that rumination and all that screwing up.

Have you ever had a truly nagging regret?  When we think of failure, it's usually in the active sense; I applied but was rejected, I aimed but missed the target, I leapt and splat.  Chances are, though, that a lot of us most regret chickening out on the trying.  Trying, finishing, and failing usually sits better than wishing you had. 

When I was in grade school, a community children’s choir began with much-anticipated auditions.  Not knowing what the caliber of the competition would be, I sat out the first year.  Was my fear baseless?  Probably.  As a kid who had performed since the age of 2 and sung before hundreds, occasionally thousands, I should have had more confidence.  Instead, I learned that fear of failure is safe but very, very boring. 

But risking failure does more than save us from chicken-regret.  It also potentially delivers real regret.  The kind that makes you a wiser, more thoughtful person.  Somehow, my first-ever interview as a budding journalist was with Newt Gingrich.  I was 18 with a brand-spanking-new steno pad, and I didn’t even know much about him, but I gathered that he was pretty connected.  It was going swimmingly, when, several intelligent questions in, when I should have thanked him and ducked out, I completely lost my head and pretty much asked him for a job.  He rolled his eyes and handed me off to an assistant, and I have recalled this in shocked embarrassment ever since.  Embarrassment, the kind where you have to accept that you are just as big an idiot as everyone else, and maybe bigger, builds the kind of character that in time makes you, hopefully, less of an idiot. 

Let’s redefine failure.  Maybe time lost is really time invested.  Maybe the lucky ones are the ones who fail most spectacularly, because they overcome the biggest obstacle to perfect peace: that last shred of faith in self.  Pride.  One of the greatest freedoms, one I must constantly rediscover, is from short-term-goal pressure.  Whether I try to build a relationship, or learn to cornrow, or get a promotion, or achieve feng shui perfection in my living room, these goals are all just vignettes punctuating this story of God and me, God in me, working toward one ultimate goal.  Failure in terms of career and cornrowing may be crucial to the success of that goal, the one where I get more like Jesus.

Milk and Solids

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  Hebrews 5:11-14

I have a friend who adopted a child from a developing nation.  When the baby arrived in America, she was small for her age and underweight.  My friend was told that the orphanage had given the infants powdered milk instead of formula because it was less expensive.  It had been sufficient for survival, but the baby had not thrived.

The warning in Hebrews 5 against apostasy reminds me of this friend’s baby.  A lot of us can recite the gospel message and even claim salvation, but when it comes to life and decisions, consult our own feelings pretty exclusively.  If apostasy sounds like a harsh label, consider that when we box the gospel out of our daily lives, it’s a withdrawal, a desertion of the faith we claim.

“But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil,” writes the author in verse 14.  This writer has little faith in our feelings or guts even to identify, much less choose, the right.  He says we require vigilant training; discernment is more complex than how we feel or even reason.  That means it takes more than just saying, “I’m saved.”  If our view of the gospel and its applications is shallow, we will fail to thrive.

Salvation is not like a club initiation.  It’s more like teaching my three-year-old to read.  It’s repetition and practice and sometimes correction.  It’s a course by which the gospel continually illuminates new areas in our lives that are ripe for growth or change.  It’s transformation by process, not by lightning flash.  If you’ve been dabbling in milk and relegating the gospel to the sidelines of your life, maybe it’s time for some meat and potatoes.