Several months ago I was talking with a friend who is pursuing a dream. The more we talked, the more I realized how his dream wasn’t happening. I had to stop and consider the fact that we (the band) might want to be careful in how we encourage people to pursue lives of freedom and passion. Does God really want us to encourage people down a path that often ends in failure and heartache?
Several days passed and I kind of forgot about my conundrum. I sat down one night to watch “Rudy”, the true story of the small, untalented guy who worked and worked until he made the Notre Dame football team. The big crescendo of the movie happened when they finally let Rudy in for one play (after they were up three touchdowns with one minute left). Rudy made a tackle, the whole stadium cheered, and he was carried off the field by his teammates (no player has been carried off the field since Rudy and that was in the mid seventies).
Rudy had failed, he had worked his tail off, and years of efforts had resulted in a single play, but even though he hadn’t achieved success, he still inspired those around him. Rudy was thrilled at what he had accomplished; even if it didn’t look like success to others, it was satisfying to him.
Why is it that we view success differently than how God views success? We serve a loving father who isn’t wrapped up in wins and losses, but is concerned with our journey and what our hearts learn and become on the way. Rudy’s journey had taught him great things about himself and far more than the over talented athlete who never has to struggle or fail. Sometimes we learn more in failure than we learn in success. If we wrap our emotions and our hearts around the negatives associated with failure, we’ll never learn what God is trying to teach us. Learning to lose is an important part of our journey and our walk with God.
My friend may never achieve his dream, but his heart will learn so much on the journey. We need to learn how to see past the wins and losses and to gauge success with the same regard as our loving Father. We don’t always have to be right and we don’t always have to win.
“Learning to lose with the best of them.”
Jacob