Failure Produces Faith

When someone says, “Tell me about yourself,” what story do you tell?  You can tell the “biographical story,” that outlines your birth, important people, travels, educational accomplishments, employment history, and current work. This story offers the listener the opportunity to connect with you on a personal level.  The alternative story I typify as the “awesome story.”  The awesome story is the epic journey that amazes your listener with the mighty feats which leave him or her saying, “Praise God.”  It is the story which gives the listener the impression you are standing on the mountain of achievement and basking in the sunshine of perfection.

There is a third story that is rarely told.  The "failure story" is equally critical to your life as a leader or emerging leader.  The failure story is intertwined with biography and awesome, but this story is hidden in our pockets.  We bring that story out and fumble with it through our fingers as we sit alone in our quiet places.  Therefore, this Leadership Friday I want to share with you my failure story.  I write my story simply as a chronological list of failures that serve as important lessons in my biological and awesome stories.  Hopefully, you will take time and share your own story with others as well.

• (1994) I am placed on academic probation at UC Riverside because I spent more time on my fraternity than my education. 
  

• (1996) I made successively poor leadership decisions as the fraternity president which led to one brother threatening to “piss in my eye.”
  

• (1997) I lost my job with the Urban League because I thought it was a noble task to refuse to remove my earring. This decision started me and my wife down the road of unemployment and homelessness.
  

• (2000) I am in basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  On qualification day for Basic Rifle Marksmanship, I do not achieve a first time go.  Needless to say, I was embarrassed because I served as the platoon guide for our basic training platoon. 
  

• (2000) I am in advanced individual training at Fort Lee, Virginia. The first evening formation and I walk out in the wrong physical fitness uniform. The drill sergeant on duty puts me in the middle of approximately 300 other Soldiers for “corrective training.” 
  

• (2001) Over a one year period, I lose all desire to pray, read the bible or desire fellowship. I’m going to church with the family but that is all it is. 
  

• (2003) In my first platoon exercise as a fresh 2nd Lieutenant, I don’t heed the advice of a young and experienced private-first class. I read the mission map wrong and lead the platoon down the wrong trail.
  

• (2005) Operation Iraqi Freedom 3. I get a hard conversation from my LTC because I failed in the training of a young Soldier who had an accidental weapons discharge.

• (2008) I am the Voter Registration Supervisor for Pulaski County.  I disagree with the decision of another county official and I have a NCO moment and verbally let her know how inept she was.  Not my best professional moment and my boss let me know that later. 

Now, I could go on about my failures as a husband, a father and all the other hats I am privileged to wear on a daily basis. Your story of failure combined with your biographical and awesome stories creates faith today. Faith requires men and women to embrace the daily events of joy and shame.  I would not know what it means to prioritize, listen to others, be specific regarding instructions, and trusting the experience of others if it were not for my failures. The failures strip us of pride and self-exaltation for the meaningful realization each of us are becoming someone greater. Therefore, embrace it all. Have faith that God is taking you to that next moment-biographical, failure, or awesome- in the story he has ultimately written for you and the praise of his name.