What Do You Do With Your Failures?

Travelling entails a lot, depending on your destination. I think it entails much more if you live in Nigeria with so much bad roads and poor road connections. You should be armed with the means of travelling if you must travel. And I will not underplay the significance of good health when it comes to traveling.

Like some people, I have experienced my share of the constraints in travelling which means I haven’t been to every place I would love to. In the few places that I have been to, I have come across different people from different backgrounds and different ideologies. Till date, I am yet to meet anyone who have not, at one time or the other, dealt with a challenging situation. I have met many people who have experienced failure at some point in their lives.

During one of my travels, my paths crossed with a young man who was in his first year in the University, and we became friends. I try to catch up with him any time I could. Little did I know that this particular ‘catching-up’ would be an unusual one. I informed him I was in town and we agreed to meet. The moment I saw him, I could tell that something was not right, but I could not tell ‘what’.

As I began to probe, he broke down in tears. In my confused state, I told him, “It’s sometimes okay to let the tears flow”. Then he said to me, “You don’t understand”.  What is it that I do not understand? He shared his sad story with me. He was in secondary school when he lost parents in an auto crash on the same day. Life has never been the same. The people who took over his parents’ wealth made life very miserable for him. After a particular incident, revenge became top on his agenda. So, he joined a secret cult the moment he gained admission into the University and became very brutal. When I met him, he had spent over 5 years as an undergraduate in 3 different universities and he was still in his first year.

I met another young man who was seeking admission into the university. He had failed at all his previous attempts and he is getting ready for another attempt. He contacted me one Saturday morning because he believed life has been always good to me, especially in my academics. He had questions he believed I could provide answers to. “Is it possible for someone who has known failure all his life to still excel?” was his question to me.

When I heard this, everything around me went blank before feeling my adrenalin pumping so heavily. I knew this is not the type of question you respond to with motivational talks. Trying to sermonize him at this point might not just be the best thing to do. Do I tell him that all things are possible with God or that he can move mountains if he believes? Am I so certain he has never heard these things before? It is either I tell him these things in a different way, or I let him know I do not have the answers.  

Somehow, my lips began to move, and I made myself vulnerable to him. I told him it will be a blatant error to pretend to have all the answer to his question. I shared some of my failures and struggles with him especially in my academics and I could notice his amazement. I shared with him how I could not handle failing one of the modules I took in a professional exam. I was not the brightest of students during my undergraduate days, but I never failed any examination. My first taste of failure and having to repeat an exam was after my university days. I handled it so poorly and I knew how badly prepared I was to handle failures.

I was a bit disappointed after our conversation because I felt I am leaving him worse than I met him. My joy and satisfaction came few days after our conversation. According to him, he struggled to attend church service the following day after we met, and it was as if the preacher was part of our previous day conversation. He was surprised that such precision could happen within a very short period (I had no conversation with anyone after we spoke). He called to inform me that he felt so loved like never before while listening to the preacher.

How do you handle your failures? What do you do after you have failed? Has failure been a consistent experience for you? Are you at your wits end? How we handle our failures is a very big deal. According to John Hobbes, are we heaping up our mistakes and calling it destiny? I love the way Max Lucado describes it in his book ‘Six Hours One Friday’ – “Your failure is not fatal. Our mistakes come to us as pebbles, small stones that serve as souvenirs of our stumbles”.

I do not have answers to what you should do but whatever you do in handling your failures matters. Why are we so afraid of failing? Vince Lombardi said, “In great attempts, it is glorious to fail. Failure means you are attempting something.

For Joseph Jacob, it was as if things were getting worse. Perhaps, that this could be a way for things to get better. On our way to greatness, we will be checked with failures but there is a big deal in how we respond to those checks. I was told that Martin Luther King Jr said “in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, he still has a dream”

We must not allow the failures of today kill, steal, and destroy our dreams. We have a place in God’s heart, and He is interested in everything that concerns us. David was described as a man after God’s heart despite his failures and shortcomings. He slept with another man's wife, killed the man, and took over his wife. His strength came from how he handled his failure afterwards. One day, we will be grateful to God for those ‘failures’

“If you cannot fly, run. If you cannot run, walk. If you cannot walk, crawl. By all means, keep moving”. Martin Luther King