This week I failed at something I thought was pretty important.

You probably wouldn’t consider it much of a failure, nor would anyone else who was around me at the time.  Unfortunately, I’ve spent the past few days replaying it over and over in my mind.

Maybe you do that to.  Probably not a good idea to rehash it over and over, but I’m hoping my frustration over that failure is the promised hope that I won’t do it again.

Like so many people around me, I struggle with wanting everything I do to be perfect.   Sometimes, when I can’t be promised perfect, I choose instead to not do it.

And I didn’t.

And now I am just mad.  Mad at myself, mad at perfect, mad at fear, mad at failure; but mostly, mad that I missed something so precious.

Opportunity.

Life is short and opportunities are meant to be seized and grabbed, enjoyed and remembered.   Instead, I find myself here remembering only what I missed—that beautiful, rotten, lovely,  and spoil- sport—opportunity

When my kids were small, they memorized a little poem.  It goes something like this:

If at first you don’t succeed; try, try again.

Tis’ a lesson you should heed; try, try again,

Then your learning will appear, if you persevere,

You will conquer, never fear; try, try again.

I don’t remember who wrote it because the book is long gone from our book shelves, but whenever someone in our family struggles with failure, this poem is suddenly resurrected.

I only wish it were as easy to live, as it is to recite.

I don’t know about you, but failure, or maybe just the fear of failure, seems very final and absolutely, too fatal.  I think I have a couple of kids who inherited my aversion to failure. In fact, I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of us out there that struggle with our fears of failure.

But fear keeps us locked in a prison.  Fear keeps us closed up and shut down.  Author, Ann Voskamp, writes, “Fear keeps a life small.”   And I’m frustrated because my life was made smaller this week, rather than larger.  I want to experience the feeling of pushing, pulling, and overpowering something I’ve always feared.

Recently, I led a small group of women through a book that covered this very idea of trying to be perfect.  The author told us we needed to come to grips with this cold, hard fact:

Nobody, except God, is perfect.

There was a silence in that room that day as we all wrapped our heads around the reality of the time that we’ve wasted, and the energy that we’ve spent trying to nail perfect to the wall.

Only God is perfect. 

No matter what I say, you say, I do, you do, or either of one of us looks like, or post in cyber-space; the reality is that no one can be perfect, look perfect, or even be perfectly right all the time.

Then why do we spend so much time trying?

I’ve had two similar conversations this week with two different friends.   Both are beautiful, fun to be with, and completely competent in just about everything they do.  Yet both struggle with the feeling that they are constantly letting the people in their life down.

But maybe we should ask if we were really meant to please everybody?  What, if, they did see your imperfections?  What if they saw you cry, miss a step, fumble over your words, hit a bad note, or some other thought up and terribly dreaded fate?

Is it ever okay to just not be okay?

Absolutely.  And this is why I’m so mad.  I’ve wrestled this, accepted this, even preached this to my friends and my children and my church, but somehow I caved to the pressure of the lie, in that moment, that I must always be okay.

It is okay to not be okay.  Perfect isn’t the goal.  Be excellent at everything but forget perfect.  Perfect steals our joy, our freedom, and our resolve to keep trying and keep growing into the children God desires us to be.

How else will our children learn to navigate through things like pain, death, hurt, rejection, anger, unless they first see us walk through it?  How else will our friends and family find moments where they can return our compassion for them, if we never give them a chance?

And how else will the people who live around us know that only God can meet their deepest needs and bring healing to a broken soul, if we’re always in the way trying so hard to be perfect?

Only God is perfect.  And that’s why this world needed Jesus.  He came and He gave so that I wouldn’t not bear this burden any more.

I am convinced more and more that true failure is only when we stop trying, stop growing, and stop resisting fear, intimidation, and the need to be perfect.

For in my perceived inadequacies and less-than perfect mishaps, God has offered me the acceptance and the protection of the perfectness of His Son and when I rest under His protective loving shelter… that is all my Father can see.  My identity is completely lost and yet, completely found in Him.

It can be all that you see when intimidation comes charging at you again with the demand for perfect.

Under the shelter of our Father’s hand and the protection of our Father’s name,  we will find true freedom to try, to grow, and to overcome our fears until we see, no longer our imperfections or our failures, but our opportunities and somehow find the strength to live out that age-old lesson to persevere and always try, try again.