I wish the word “Failure” elicited knowing glances and nods of respect – – I wish it ignited unprompted slaps on the back and cheers of encouragement from on-looking crowds…. But in our culture, it doesn’t. We are often only willing to reveal our own failures in the context and safety of subsequent successes. Sometimes I just want to jump up and down and shake the world like a snow globe until everything falls back into a semblance of good sense. Failure is GOOD. And more than good, it’s necessary. Instead of eliciting shame, it should be a badge of courage we slap on ourselves, our children and any other soul we see emerge from the experience still moving forward, still kicking – – somehow unextinguished.

This weekend I had to watch my daughter struggle through a race she had been training for, for months. She didn’t come near the time she had hoped to record, and when the race was over, her head swung down and hung between her shoulders shaking back and forth. It was hard to watch. After all that training, all that hard work I wanted her to have her moment. But there was nothing I could do to change a thing. And even if it were possible for me to do so, taking away the opportunity for her to walk through that “failure” to the threshold of “What now,?” would be robbing her of one of life’s greatest opportunities for growth.

I think part of the problem is that the world moves so fast there isn’t time to fail any more. Everything seems to be moving at warp speed and the world raises kids to be successful at 18, when we should be raising kids to be happy, healthy and well-adjusted at forty. We should be raising kids focused on building solid character, great values and a healthy portfolio of real life experiences – – not resumes. There is no way to avoid failure if you are playing “the long game.” Failure is a necessary part of the process – – an extraordinarily valuable part of the process – – which is why it’s remarkable that we spend so much energy sometimes trying to “save” our kids from failure. When they meet failure on their own, they get to learn those hard lessons that forge a different way ahead the next time. My dad used to tell me, “Even if I could spare you this pain, I wouldn’t because you will learn from it and you will grow….” He was right.

I always think of the back stories of the wildly successful and the ridiculously philanthropic. They are the people most intimately acquainted with failure, and their fall-down-and-get-back-up stories are what lead them to truly authentic success and selfless generosity. Failure breeds compassion for self and empathy for others, it creates patience and fuels drive. Failure ignites passion and adjusts perspective, forging new paths to old goals and creating some new ones along the way. Failure teaches, tempers and humbles. Without it, success is never truly earned.

When we moved into the home we live in now, we had six floods over the first two and a half years. They were the kind of epic floods that forced us to bring so much STUFF up from the basement that we literally had to create paths through the rest of house to navigate the new configuration. And then there was the ritual of what to save, what to discard and where to spread everything out to dry while the entire basement was redone – – over and over and over again. It was brutal. With each flood we removed dry-wall, pulled up carpet and padding, took out tacking strips and bleached everything, including each other, trying to stave off the relentless onslaught of mold. All the storage cupboards had to be emptied, dried, and repacked, item by item. And then there was the loss and damage – – I stopped keeping track. The mildew, the smell, the mud. It was utterly overwhelming and a little bit of my sanity might very well have been washed away with the last of them…. After the fifth flood, we waited SIX MONTHS before we put a new carpet down because, as delightful as he was, I was sick and tired of talking to Ed in the Home Depot flooring department. He knew me on a first name basis and I nearly wept the day he recognized my voice on the phone without me identifying myself first. I knew all about his family and what was going on in his life and every few months we had hours to reconnect. He kept a template of my order information and although we kept changing colors, he was kind enough to forego measurement after the first three floods.

So on a Friday, after six months of a bone dry basement, we laid the fourth shade of neutral carpet and when the installers left, I had the fleeting thought, “I hate this color…” but quickly banished the sentiment for fear it would jinx the fix. Apparently I didn’t banish it fast enough because that tawny-shade of brown only lasted until Monday when the house flooded for the sixth time in the most spectacular way – – floating couches and all. The disruption to family and finances and peace was inestimable and relentless – – for years.

Each time we flooded, in addition to repairing what the water damaged, broke or ruined, we also had to address why we were flooding in the first place. First we replaced the wimpy sump pump with the gee whiz version, then when we found that was not quite enough to do the job, we added a second sump pump. After that we got a back-up system, then we cleared an outside drainage line, next replaced a hopelessly clogged grate, and finally we re-graded the entire back yard so the overflow from the neighbors wouldn’t form a torrent of water headed straight for down under.

Suffice it to say since that last “fix,” there have been no more water marks added to our furniture however in the perfectly dreadful timing of it all – – the last rug I bought from Ed at Home Depot was the absolute cheapest of the bunch – – not the plush, extra padded varieties I had done the first three rounds, not even the stain resistant, heavy tread I tried the fourth time through. No, this one was almost white and had no bells and no whistles, no “durability features” or long-life guarantees. I gave up hope, one flood too soon. So that’s the rug we are left with.

But the point is this – – It wasn’t the last fix that did it, it was the combination of all six fixes. We failed each time until the last, and every time we failed, we tweaked something, identified something and worked out a solution until we finally came up dry. Life is like that. Failure is a necessary step in achieving lasting, meaningful, authentic success. I have all sorts of crazy confidence that we will have to live with the “ugly rug” as long as it lasts because I am as sure as I have ever been that we are not going to flood again, no matter what. We have earned a dry basement through six colossal failures.

Failure is an extraordinary teacher. All great successes are built upon the wisdom of failure – – without it the constructs of success are weak, ill-tested, superficial, and temporary. So when Phoebe “failed” this weekend….as much as it hurt to watch, I knew something spectacular could rise out of the ashes.

Watching her come up short of her own expectations was really hard to witness. I had seen the work she had put in up until that point – – all the mornings up before dawn, all the planning and preparation, and when I saw doubt come in and yank that carpet out from under her in the moment, I wanted to inject her with my vision of her, and give her the confidence to ignore the fear. But I couldn’t…

The trouble was, it wasn’t “failure” out of a place of best effort, best attitude – – she let fear get the best of her. And because fear loves to masquerade as so many other emotions like frustration, insecurity, resignation and anger, she didn’t see that until she saw the video of the race.

Last night she snuggled up to me when I was lying in bed and said to me, “I saw the video of my 2K.”

I was surprised she brought it up. “What’d you think?” I asked.

“I thought I looked GREAT…” She laughed, “especially in the middle.” She had raced hard in the beginning and started out strong and finished with an incredible kick but right in the middle of the race there was a moment in which she lost her wind and her confidence at the same time and instead of rowing through, she faltered.

The way she talked about her video, I knew she had seen and recognized her breaking point for what it was- – the point at which her body faltered and instead of rowing through, she took a moment to pay attention to the fear that came with that…she let her head get in the way of her body’s ability to execute. The question was now, what was she going to do about it?

What I didn’t hear were any excuses. Which made my heart leap. She had seen it – – the moment when she shook her head and her shoulders crumpled – – the moment fear rowed past her, and her best efforts were subjugated to emotion. She saw it. And a little seed of “row-no-matter-what” was planted. She saw it and didn’t shy away from it – – in fact she was being pretty self-deprecating and had already packed her clothes for morning practice.

Like my dad, it was one of those circumstances I would not have taken away from her even if I could. She needed to experience this. She needed to watch that tape, as painful as it probably was for her to see. Because seeing the truth is ALWAYS a gift – – and if you are courageous enough to not shy away, If you are brave enough to lean in and address it – – then you can fly.

And Phoebe leaned in. Like a champ. Champions experience fear all the time, and now Phoebe knows what it will feel like the next time fear visits – – but she will have a choice about what she wants to do about it – – succumb to it or just let it float by in the face of undeterred effort.

This kid has been in the garage, almost every morning for the past five months, in the pitch black hours of pre-dawn preparing for that race. This was a really hard lesson for her to learn. Getting back up after a knock down like that, is something I am not sure I could do with the aplomb and courage she showed this morning.

That’s grit. Facing the truth and rowing on. That’s my girl. That’s what leads to better and better races, and in life – -that’s what leads to the life God has in store for us – – neither a life limited by our own imagination, nor a life subject to those feelings of fear or condemnation – – because feelings like that don’t come from Him. Rowing on, no matter if you are in the midst of the biggest competition of your life or just a regular day – – it’s all about knowing that God has equipped you with everything you need to face every circumstance. I wanted to scream to that child in the middle of her race, YOU ARE ENOUGH. Because she is. God made her that way. She never needs more than she has at any given moment. It’s the whole Dorie thing… “Just keep swimming.” If we trust God is out there and if we know God is for us, then our best efforts and our best attitude is all we EVER need to bring to the party. Sometimes that will lead to success other times it won’t, but really it doesn’t matter – – both are part of the process. And failure is a great way to show back up at the starting line, having shed a little fear, shed a little pride, shed a little angst and expectation and all those other accoutrements we need never lug with us again …and just row.