As a leader, I have failed. Many times. Many, many times. That’s me playing bass in the attached photo, and I can guarantee that I missed (at least) a note or two that day. But I’ve also failed in ways that were a bigger deal. I have been uncaring, I have been relationally smothering. I have been harshly critical and I have excused behavior that I should have addressed. I have crazily overworked and I have been lazy. And on and on and on….
It’s not what I want. But it is understandable. I’m human. Broken and fallen. No matter how much I would like to do things right 100% of the time, it’s not going to happen. Expecting perfection of yourself is idolatry – only God is perfect. I’m going to fail. The question is: What happens then?
My friend Rory Noland summed things up well in his excellent book “The Heart of the Artist:”
“It’s okay to fail. No one succeeds every time. You and I will make mistakes, so we need to learn how to fail graciously. We need to own up to our mistakes, not run away from them or pass responsibility on to someone else. No one’s expecting perfection (except maybe us), so we don’t need to defend ourselves every time we fail. When we mess up, let’s swallow our pride, admit it, learn from it, and move on. Just because we fail doesn’t mean we’re failures…”
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