Learning Through Failure
Written by Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski
“Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. .”
I used to take failure hard. To be honest, I still do. More than the recognition that I am imperfect, it is the feeling of letting other people down. Growing up, I was better at individual sports than team sports because I was so worried about letting the team down, I would not take chances. Finally, however, I would take chances in personal endeavors because the only one I would disappoint was myself. It took years not to be crippled by the idea of failure.
One way I overcame my crippling attitude toward failure was my work in a college speech team. We would present our speeches before others on the speech team and then reflect on our presentations, as if they were the judges. The experience of being so vulnerable made my skin crawl. I had to keep reminding myself that their judgments were an attempt to be helpful. Further, a little reflection on my shortcomings now would keep me from failing as severely when I stood before the actual judges. It helped me differentiate my being from my presentation. The presentation could fail, but that didn’t mean I was a failure.
Over time, this speech review helped me change my definition of failure. What I once considered a failure, I now thought part of a more extensive learning process and expanding my training. All of life’s failures are just part of our learning process, developing our training on a myriad of issues. God has created us to learn through experience. We experience failure or limited successes until we are courageous enough to evaluate our actions and learn from our shortcomings. Considering challenges is the process of wisdom.
Today, pray for the courage to look at your life in all its complexity. We can only face our failures when we recognize our failures do not define us. Our place in God’s plan defines us. We are valuable because God called us to be in this place, with these people, at this point. We are not in this process alone. God blesses us with ongoing care. It isn’t the number of times we fail but what we learn and accomplish that makes all the difference.
