What Happens When We Fail?

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

I came across this sentence in this book some years ago. Seemed simple enough. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It haunted me. There are five or six sentences in the world like that. It changed my life.

I don’t know about you, but nothing has come easy for me. It’s all worked-for. And that work involves embarrassing failures. You just get up–cry or laugh–and work at it again.

I remember the sentence as a tool against shame. The difference between me and my younger self is that I expect failure. And, more importantly, there’s grace for it.

I’ve seen people close themselves off to the truth, to self-improvement, to growth. Close themselves off from viewing who they are–the magnitude of their own failure–for the power of the shame that comes with it.

I don’t know anybody who couldn’t use a little grace in their lives.

When things go wrong for me. When I find myself face-to-face with the failure I’ve manufactured out of the short-sightedness of my own will, I try to remember what Sheriff Ed Tom Bell taught me. He is one of the most important mentors in my life. More real to me than real people.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

To me, it’s a statement about grace. If we don’t offer grace to ourselves, who will?

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