No Longer Playing It Safe
I’m not good at failure.
It seems like that might be a good thing. I mean, who would even want to be good at failure? But what I mean is that I’m not good at dealing with it. All my life I have tried different ways to avoid failure: by pretending that the things I’m not good at aren’t that important; by acting as if failure doesn’t matter; by trying to drown the potential for failure in a flood of self-esteem talk: I’m a great person, so whatever I do must be a success.
None of it worked – even if I thought it did at the time.
Over the past year, in prayer and confession, I have asked God to shine the light of truth into the dark places in my soul, and He has. It is not a comfortable experience, but it has been a transformative one. Most recently, I’ve been realizing the extent to which fear of failure shapes and constrains my choices – and how letting go of that fear, and trusting in God’s perfect will for me, opens up new and exciting possibilities.
Failure-avoidance certainly shaped my college experience. After my freshman year, I made the smart choice to change my major from Animal Science to English, recognizing that my childhood dream of being a veterinarian was just that – a childhood fantasy, not a viable career. I’m glad I made that change… but I have to say, it was very convenient that changing my major let me avoid more science or math classes, since those were the ones I had struggled with. Even in grad school, I operated in failure-avoidance mode. The academic community in English is profoundly relativistic, so it was the perfect field for an articulate, insecure person. If I could make a convincing case for my view of “truth” about a particular literary text, no one could tell me I was wrong.
Now I’m an English professor, teaching literature and writing. I’m good at my job – very good at it, in fact. It’s challenging, in the sense that it requires me to think carefully about what I’m doing, and to respond to my students’ needs, but it’s not really difficult.
Being a success as a student and then as a teacher has been very important to me. But superseding my self-image as a student, writer, or teacher, is my new identity in Christ. Though I didn’t know it then, I know it now: my ability to learn, to write, and to teach are gifts from God.
Now what? I love my job. I enjoy my students, I enjoy teaching at my college, I have the time to write, I feel that the work I’m doing is, in fact, pleasing to Him. He has blessed my life abundantly this past year. But over the past few months, I’ve started to ask a very, very challenging question: Is this how I can best use God’s gifts in His service?
As I prayed about this a few days ago, I came to understand why it’s a scary question for me. I realized that part of what I’m afraid of is – you guessed it – failure.
What if I go back to school to study the Bible, philosophy, and theology and discover that I have a hard time with the material? What if I’m not an excellent student? What if I get another degree and start a new career, teaching at a Christian college or seminary, and I find out that I’m a passable but not outstanding theologian?
What if I fail at the tasks God puts before me?
It may be that I am, in fact, exactly where God wants me to be. But… I want to ask Him for confirmation on that, rather than just assume that since it’s comfortable, it’s the right fit. You see, I’m realizing that if I’m not at risk to fail, I am not using my gifts to their fullest.
I’ve been a fencer since college. For a long time, I was a mediocre recreational fencer, with no great results but no expectations either. Then, about two and a half years ago, I joined a new fencing club and got a new coach. A couple of different factors started working together, and I found myself developing as a fencer, from being Division III, to being a strong Division II fencer… to being a Division I fencer, competing against Olympians and World Champions. To fence at this level, I have to push my body right to its physical limits; I have to be mentally and emotionally disciplined; I have to learn how to open this aspect of my life to God’s guiding and transforming work, in order to glorify Him through my body as well as through my mind. It is tremendously exciting to be able to fence at this level. But in the process, I’ve done something important:
I have failed.
At this level, when I’m pushing myself to the absolute limits of strength, endurance, skill, and mental focus, against opponents who are better than I am, any mistake can be devastating. What’s more, now that I am at a higher level, I have correspondingly higher expectations than I did as a low-level fencer… and with every success, the expectations rise up a notch. The result? As a high-level fencer, I have failed – many times – sometimes quite memorably.
And so, in fencing, I have started to learn the humility that I never had to learn in any other discipline. Some of my most important breakthroughs have come through failure: or rather, in the aftermath of failure, when I reflected on the experience and learned from it. But as my chances of failure have increased – as I compete at a level that’s a genuine stretch for me – so too has my joy in fencing, and the amount of personal growth that has come out of it.
Fencing has showed me that genuinely risking failure is a sign that I’m fully using the gifts God has graced me with. The two things are intimately connected. To back off from the chance of failure is to back off from the truly joyful exploration of God’s good gifts in my life.
That’s a lot scarier in real life than it sounds on paper. As I look at my life, I can see that my work, satisfying though it is, does not challenge me intellectually and professionally the way fencing challenges me mentally, physically, and emotionally. What would it be like to also be maximally using God’s gifts in my work, as well as in my leisure? Am I even prepared to hear the answer? If God calls me to a more challenging career, will I have the courage to say Yes?
The upshot is that right now I am considering whether I should pursue further education, and if so, to what end. Yes, I am afraid of failure. I am afraid that what God sees as the right challenge for me may feel like too much for me to handle. But when I said, “Your will be done, not mine,” I didn’t add “…unless it’s too scary.” I am praying about this, and doing research, and reaching out to others for advice and support.
The one thing I’m not doing – not any more – is playing it safe.
NOTE: About a month after I wrote that piece, I made the decision to apply to seminary to study theology.
Related posts:
Dr Holly Ordway came to Christ through reason, in the pursuit of truth. "In your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 15).
She writes about her journey from atheism to orthodox Christian faith in her book "Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith" (Moody Publishers).
