Sometimes Grace is Failure
...published with Zeale
If you are anything like me, fear of failure haunts my steps. I am terrified of failing, of letting people down, of never reaching the high standard which I set for myself. Paralyzed of the fall, sometimes I am tempted to avoid the climb.
I don’t think its just me—adults in general are terrified of being hurt. When I was a child, my friends and I were constantly running up and down, falling off playgrounds and scooters, climbing trees and bouncing off the world to find our place in it. Often, this process left us with a scrape or two, maybe even a black eye from walking in front of the swing-set (a vicious lesson on awareness of your surroundings).
Yet, for us, this was simply a part of growing. You fell off the bike, had a bit of a cry, then climbed back on again, ready to learn from your mistake. When did that childlike effort to try again fade? When did we become crippled with the fear of failure?
In my most recent article, published with Zeale, I relate one the biggest lessons I learned from my time discerning in the convent: how often the greatest gift God can give is failure.
One night at dinner during my first year at the convent, I sat near a sister I had never met before. She wanted to hear about my postulant year, but I was far more interested in how her year had been going; about teaching and being a fully fledged religious sister.
When I asked how her year went, though, she looked at me and said, “You know I’ll be honest with you sister, I’ve had a really hard year — I’ve really failed in a lot of ways.”
Surprised, I listened as she went on to tell me about her year, teaching a grade she had never taught before. She talked about having a hard time connecting with students, failing to meet learning benchmarks, and parents who demanded the impossible. I tried to listen as compassionately as I could, and then offered a phrase that had often been passed on to me.
“Well, God gives you the grace for anything he asks you to do.” She smiled at me, who must have seemed, at that moment, very young.
“He does,” she said, “and sometimes that grace is failure.”
Her words came back to me over two years later, when I found myself in a plane flying home, leaving the convent. At that moment, I felt like a failure. Now, years later, I see the wisdom in her words.
Grace-filled failures date back to the beginning of human history. In the Exultet at Easter we sing about the Felix Culpa of Adam and Eve—their “happy fault,” a kind of happy failure. Then, in the Bible, the long line of our spiritual ancestors fail time and time again. Sometimes that failure is God’s action; think of Job and the loss of his family, home, and health. Other times our ancestors made their own failure; think of David and Bathsheeba or Moses and the promised land.
More recently there have been other holy failures, such as…
Like what you’re reading? Click here to read the full article on Zeale, or here to read on Refine.
Looking for more convent content? Check out these articles from the archive:
A Little Miracle (how I got to know my guardian angel!)
Inside Religious Life: What the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Get Wrong (written in 2023 during the SPI scandal)
Or check out these other articles published with Zeale and Refine:
The Losing Battle of Process to Progress: an Ode to Making Tea
Why dressing well still matters: How your clothes shape confidence, respect, and success
