Facing the Fear of Failure

There was a season in my life when I moved away from my family and friends. Gasp! Not shocking at all I know. Most people do this when they graduate from high school. I actually went to college in my hometown though, so this happened a little later in life for me. As I mentioned, I used to play college basketball. I played for four years at a university in my hometown and had the time of my life. I loved my experience there and we had a ton of success as a team. I had a lot of success as an individual too, but during my senior year I realized that I had to get out of my hometown.

So, after I graduated, I decided to use my fifth year of eligibility or what everyone calls a COVID year and transfer somewhere new to get my master’s degree. I was so scared to leave my hometown, but I knew it was time. I also knew that I could not make the decision on my own, so I leaned heavily onto my faith. I prayed what I now realize was a really dangerous prayer.

I said, “Here I am Lord. Send me!” Because if I was going to go somewhere new then I definitely wanted it to be where the Lord wanted me. BUT in the back of my head, I was also thinking that the Lord would know the best possible place for me to go. That He would definitely send me to the place where I would have the most fun or the most success.

I even bought a cute tapestry that said those exact words and hung it above my bed. I thought, “Lord send me! I’m ready to have some fun and go on a little adventure for a year.”

Well, somebody should have put a warning label on that prayer because that is most definitely not what it means. I have learned now that saying this prayer means that you are offering your life to Christ. You are saying to God that wherever You need me and whenever You need me, I will go. Not just to the really cool places that God can take you because He’ll take you to those places too, but also to the scary, dirty, and ugly places. 

When I prayed that prayer God sent me to a D1 college in Milwaukee.

If you google Milwaukee you’ll see the beaches, the lake, and the big skyline. This is what I pictured for myself. I nice little vacation for a year. But Milwaukee so happens to also be a little bit scary.

For a small-town girl like me this place felt like a different country. Never in my life did I think I could get so stressed out doing simple things like going to the grocery store. 

The first week I lived there I set out to get a few things from the store. I put the directions into my phone and was excited that it was only a couple miles away. Where I am from a couple miles only means a couple minutes. In Milwaukee that is not the case. Where I am from parking is also not an issue. In Milwaukee that is not the case. I easily found the grocery store, but I could not figure out where I should park. I drove around the store, which was surrounded by one-way roads, at least four times before I found the parking lot. Instead of going into that grocery store I was ready to just keep driving, hop on the interstate (which I also hated driving on!) and go home. All of you from big cities are probably making fun of me as you read this, but I hate to admit just how traumatizing this experience was for me. 

Eventually getting groceries got a lot easier for me but living in Milwaukee was still tough.

Living in an apartment by myself and coming in with only one year of eligibility made connecting with my teammates hard. I also admit that I did not have the season I wanted to. It was filled with a ton of ups and downs just like my whole experience. I met a lot of amazing people during my time in Milwaukee and got to do some things that I thought would never be possible. (If you would have told me my sophomore year of college that I would eventually be a D1 basketball player I would have been so confused on how that could be possible but by the grace of God I was able to achieve that dream.)

Still, it was a difficult year for me. I missed my parents, I missed my siblings, I missed my friends, and I missed my boyfriend whom I thought I was going to find in Milwaukee. (God had other plans for that though.) Until then I did not know what people meant when they said they were homesick. But that year I really felt it like a pit in my stomach. The whole time I kept questioning why God would send me here of all places. I would look at that tapestry above my bed and get so angry. 

Like I said, I thought that prayer meant God was going to send me somewhere really good. It turns out that God did send me somewhere really good. Just not in the way that I imagined. Instead, He sent me to a place that was really good for me. 

God knew it was time for me to get out of my comfort zone. Sending me to Milwaukee was His way of preparing me for my next season of life after basketball. Driving in big cities no longer scares me, but there is something even more important that does not scare me now either. 

Failure. 

Before I went to Milwaukee I was terrified of failing. I was terrified of not scoring this many points or having that many rebounds. In track, I was terrified of not running fast enough times. In school I was terrified of getting anything less than an A. At times my worst possible nightmare was something as silly as getting a B. I was terrified of not reaching the goals that I set for myself. I have always set big goals and when I transferred to Milwaukee things were no different. I wanted to do things like start every game and win an all-conference award, but guess what? 

I failed.

I didn’t achieve those goals. My biggest fear came true. I fell short of the expectations I set for myself. 

At my old school I was lucky enough to achieve almost every single one of the goals I set for myself there. I worked really hard and things worked out in my favor. At Milwaukee I worked really hard too, probably even harder, but things didn't work out for me like I was used to. For a while I thought this meant I was a failure. I beat myself up over all the things I thought I could have or should have done. For a while I was even a little angry at God. I was mad that He sent me here. 

Then I remembered what I prayed. I said, “Here I am God. Send me.” I said here is my life. Take it and use it as you please. How then could I get mad when the only thing He did was answer my prayer?

I had my plan for what would happen in Milwaukee and God had His. I thought for a long time that my plan was way better. What a silly thought. His plan was so much better than anything I could think or imagine. He knows me far better than I know myself and He knew that I would have to fail in order to take the next steps. He knew that He would have to break me down before He could build me up.

Until then I had achieved all the goals in my life by just working really hard. I had thought that I had gotten everything in my life by my own abilities, but I was wrong. God had given me all those things and had taken me to all those places. 

Him bringing me to Milwaukee helped to humble me but even more so it helped me to give it all to Him. It helped me to pray “Here I am. Send me,” and this time mean it, even knowing the risks. It helped me to relate to the people who fall a little short of their dreams. The people who work their butt off and still don’t make it off the end of the bench. 

I thought not playing in a game was the most embarrassing thing that could possibly happen to me as an athlete. In college and even in high school there was not a single game of basketball that I did not play. In college there was not even a single game from my freshman to senior year that I did not start in. In Milwaukee though, guess what happened to me? There was one game that I did not play in. One game where my butt only left the bench to clap and my warm up jersey never came off. That hurt. It hurt my heart because I worked so hard day in and day out and it hurt my pride. I was a mess after that game. I was embarrassed and I was angry but now I think back to that experience and I’m glad. I’m glad I had to sit through that game. 

Right now I work with Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an organization who aims to lead athletes closer to Jesus. Before I went to Milwaukee I did not realize how lucky I was. I had no serious injuries and I was blessed with a lot of success. While many athletes have experiences like that there are just as many who don’t. At the time I thought God was closing doors in my face. I had planned on being really successful because hey that is what I had always done right? I realize now that God was opening doors for me. He was doing me a favor because now I can relate to so many more athletes. I can relate to the ones that feel like they are on top of the world and I can relate to the ones who feel like they are stuck in the mud. 

 Maybe you are having the best season of your life right now whether it’s in sports, music, art, or whatever you are passionate about. Maybe you just broke a scoring record or won a really prestigious award. Or maybe like me you had a season where you and the bench became best friends. Maybe you got hurt and couldn’t play or practice. Maybe you are in a season of life where everyone around you is telling you that you just aren’t quite good enough, your work is just not quite what we are looking for, or worse, they are telling you to give up. You know what I say? Keep going. 

The worst thing that is going to happen to you is that you fail. But now I can tell you from experience that failing is not as scary as we have made it out to be. You know what is really scary though? Giving up. Thirty years or fifty years from now you are not going to be kicking yourself in the butt for going after a dream and falling a little short. When I am fifty I am not going to regret chasing after a dream and failing. I am on the other hand going to regret never having chased after that dream. 

You know the old saying - sometimes you have to fall before you fly. Well it’s true. Sometimes you have to fail before you can fly. You have to jump out of the safety of your little nest to recognize that falling on your butt doesn’t actually hurt that bad. For me that is exactly what I had to do. I had to leave home and fall on my butt to realize that the only thing worse than failing was not flying at all. 

I have always wanted to write but I have always stopped as soon as I started because I was afraid to fail. I had the same thoughts I did on the basketball court. Instead of not shooting because I was scared to miss, I was not writing because I was scared nobody would want to read what I had to say. I was worried about embarrassing myself. I was worried about spending countless hours typing just for the words I write to never make it off my computer. Even as I write this now, I have to fight off these thoughts in my head. I am so scared that nobody will read this. But then I remember that I have already failed. I have already failed, and I am still alive. The sun still rises and most importantly - God is still good. 

No matter the outcome, it is all part of His plan. Casting Crowns sings some of my favorite lyrics in their song “Oh My Soul”. They sing:

“Oh, my soul / You are not alone / There’s a place where fear has to face the God you know / One more day, He will make a way / Let Him show you how, you can lay this down.”

It is that third line I have to repeat to myself over and over. “There is a place where fear has to face the God you know.” I’ll take my fears up against God any day. 

Why? Because you know who else everyone thought failed? Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross for OUR sins people laughed at Him and mocked Him. They put a crown on His head and a sign over Him that read, “King of the Jews”. When they took His lifeless body off the cross and sealed Him in the tomb, those who persecuted Him went home and celebrated and His disciples went home and hid in fear. They thought that was the end of the story. They thought the plan had failed but the only plan that failed was theirs. God’s plan on the other hand had not. God’s plan was an empty tomb. 

The disciples and Jews thought that Jesus was going to be a worldy king but God’s plan was different. Jesus says that His kingdom is not of this world but from another place. Jesus did not come to this Earth to rule over an empire but He came to bear witness to the truth of who He is - the Messiah. In other words He is the Savior of the world. Only through believing in Him can our sins be forgiven and only through believing in Him can we be saved and enter into the Kingdom of heaven. That is a far better promise than entering into a kingdom on this Earth.

So the next time you think you failed just remember that empty tomb. Remember that there was a time when the entire world had thought that Jesus failed. But the truth was that God needed Him to fall before He could fly. Or rather God needed Jesus to fall so that we could fly. He needed to put Him in the tomb for there to be an empty tomb. 

This is exactly why I continue to pray that dangerous prayer. “Here I am Lord. Send me!” I was ready to throw that silly tapestry away that said those words but now I have it hanging up again behind me as I write this. God never fails. He did not make a mistake when He sent me to Milwaukee and most importantly, I never failed there. Everything was part of His good and perfect plan. So no matter how dangerous it is, I will keep asking God to send me. I will keep saying “here I am!” Why? Because like Casting Crowns sings, there is a place where fear has to face the God I know.