I fail... it's okay....

I have always had the attitude that I had to be the best that I could be. All included not failing at anything. Sadly, I have a reputation at never finishing everything that I start because I am to afraid to fail that I quit completely. I can have these great dreams and aspirations but not enough drive to finish them. That comes from a long line of failure and disappointment in my past. That's my own issue though.

What God was teaching me last year that it was okay for me to fail. If I kept the mentality that I couldn't fail and just give up, I didn't feel a since of failure. I just quit. I didn't connect failure with quitting. When I was in Governors School I was really hard on myself. I would do my performances and beg for criticism and never looked at my positive feedback. I was always wanting to improve. I would see my friends practicing hours and hours and hours for their monologues and I would just do them with ease and no practice. It was a natural talent placed in me to be powerful without lots of practice.

We had a play that we all wrote together. It was a string of dreams put together. We called it Lucid. For the opening, I thought it would be cool to have children's voices saying what they dreamed about being when they grew up. I got permission from the children's parents to have their voices used and went to my old elementary school and recorded them. I was so excited about this little baby project that I had started to create. I got back to Governors school and uploaded it and the audio was crap. Where I had recorded it was in a room with a coke machine and all I could hear was the hum from the machine. I was so discouraged. I had failed. I gave up. I didn't want to work on it any longer because of my level of frustration. It reflected significantly on my grade. Not just on that piece but as my final score as well.

Could I have gone back and redone it, yes. Would it have been a pain, yes. But I would have been able to say that I contributed to the performance other than being in it. We put limitations on ourselves. That one experience kept me from doing something with my knowledge from Governors School for about 7 years. Then when I did it again, well that's a whole different story dealing with allowing influences to bring you down.

You know your biggest mistake may be risk you don't take. The next big risk that you could take could be the biggest life changing opportunity that you have. You never know. then again it could be your biggest fail. It's OKAY to fail because there is grace. It's easy to remember that when you are sinning, but not when you are trying to do things for God. We're to afraid of actually accomplishing something huge that God asks us to do. It's really easy for us to say, "Oh I sinned I'll just ask for forgiveness because God is mercy and grace."

I, personally, need to start looking at failure as a lot of people look at sinning. I know that God will forgive me. (I know that's not an excuse to continue sinning.) Yet, they fearlessly continue sinning. I need to be willing to go on a limb and try things and be able to say that I failed instead of looking at them and saying, "oh I could have but I didn't because I possessed to much fear of failure." Failure gives you strength. Andy Mineo says it best in his song "You can't stop me."

I got two choices when I do this - Make moves or make excuses.

If we make excuses constantly about our lives then we will never be able to move forward. You can remain in complacency or do something about it. The choice is yours. The other thing he says in the song is that he is his biggest problem. Like I said before, we put limitations on ourselves. STOP IT! You can do anything you want to do. The only thing holding you back from failing or thriving is you! Know that failing isn't a bad thing. At least you tried!