Failure

I think most people over the age of 16 know that you learn the most from mistakes, from misfortune, from failure.

That doesn't make it easier when you do actually fail.

I've been involved with a pretty intense project the past six months and today we were told that we weren't going to make our planned release date. And part of it was related to my piece of the project. I know it wasn't completely my fault, but my nature is to accept the blame and to then make it even more my fault than it really is.

I was thinking about failure and how we deal with it. There are some like me, that stay on an endless guilt trip. Then we have those that want to take the blame and shift it. We also have those that want to twist the blame and make someone pay for it, or wreak vengeance. There are the avoiders, too.

Because we are on the side of the fall that errs on the side of sin, we're going to do all of the above. I mean, for Pete's sake, this was evident after Eve ate the apple. Eve shifted the blame, so did Adam, and Adam tried to hide, and so on.

I realize that work failure is one thing, but personal failure is another. With personal failure, I have noticed that I can play the blame game. I know my children have said they feel like they are always the one that messed up. Some of that may because I am the Mom, but some of that is because I do get defensive.  

Intellectually, and thanks to the gospel, I understand that incorrect reactions to failure happen. In my heart, I need to accept that the failure is there to learn from, that it shapes me if I can see it for what it is, and that I must allow for God's sovereignty in the failure if I didn't do anything morally wrong.

I'm still not at peace yet about this.