Fear of failure

David Justice: What's your biggest fear?
Scott Hatteberg: A baseball being hit in my general direction.
David Justice: That's funny. Seriously, what is it?
Scott Hatteberg: No, seriously, that is. —from the movie Moneyball

Grandpa Murry took me to see the Baltimore Orioles play at Memorial Stadium sometime around 1960. Brooks Robinson was my hero. He bought me a program and a bag of peanuts and we sat in the bleachers along the right field foul line amongst a group of men who kept up a running commentary on each player’s performance, the umpire’s ridiculous calls, and the team’s prospects for a winning season.

When I was 10 or 11, I tried out for our town’s little league team and made the cut. It wasn’t too difficult. You had to hit 2 out of 3 slow-pitched balls sent right over the plate, and you had to shag some flies in the outfield. I was an extremely skinny kid, and the Pirates uniform I was issued for my first game was literally held up by safety pins.

My first at bat was a humiliating experience, with the pitches blazing past me before my brain could even process that I might take a swing. My right field demonstrations weren’t any better, and the coach had a quiet talk with my mom afterwards, suggesting I wait another year. I was sent down to the minors after a single game, my career hopes dissolving like cotton candy in a warm, summer rain.

(Boomer reference: MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark; all the sweet green icing flowing down!)

At various times in my life I’ve had to step out and do something that I wasn’t sure I could do, and sometimes I was proved right. Even worse, I’ve often stepped up to a challenge I was confident I could meet, only to fail. Failure hurts; to keep trying after multiple failures takes courageous toughness, resilience, and a (possibly) delusional level of self-confidence.

Some people seem to have that resilience. I often have not.

A baseball player steps up to the plate in a situation where his team is depending on a big hit. He hits a big, fat, pop fly to center field and the game is lost. The fans boo. The press goes on the attack. Rumors start circulating in the club house about a trade. And suddenly, his next at bat, if there is one, becomes a must-redeem-myself experience.

A very public failure is worse than one no one sees, at least for those of us whose self-worth depends on the approval of others. If you grew up feeling achievement was a necessary prerequisite to being loved, failure became not a momentary stumble but a total rejection. If you grew up believing perfection was the only acceptable level of achievement, failure could crush your spirit.

And, if you grew up believing that your value as a person is entirely dependent on your accomplishments, what happens when you simply don’t measure up to expectations?

I have always felt that my worth was being weighed on a scale, and that my accomplishments, however numerous, were always heavily outweighed by my failures.

And then, I heard about a God whose love was unconditional, whose forgiveness for failure was extravagant, who didn’t weigh our lives on a scale of good against bad, but who simply declared our scales balanced by the perfect absolution of his perfect Son.

There is a beautiful metaphor in John Mark McMillan’s song How He Loves, where he writes: “If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.” It suggests to me that I need to surrender my tragically and inescapably imperfect life to God, who will submerge me in his cleansing grace.

But some of us are determined to float, our chins held above the waves by the flotsam of stubborn self-reliance. Others of us are determined to swim, certain that we can find the endurance to avoid needing God’s help—or perhaps we’re just too proud to ever admit we might need something we can’t provide for ourselves.

Paul states the problem succinctly:

[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. —Romans 3:23-24 (NIV)

Never mind what others think of me, if my accomplishments are to be measured against “the glory of God,” what hope is there? How delusional does one have to be to think that God may look at me one day and say, “Now there’s an impressive example of human excellence!”

But, I guess I’ve shifted somewhat, speaking now about the eternal worth of my accomplishments instead of the more immediate issue of my perceived reputation among the spectators who have come to watch and critique my life performance from the bleachers. If God’s grace washes away my failures—and I believe it does just that as I put my faith and trust and hope in Jesus Christ—I’m still left with the nagging worry that I must earn my way into the good graces of the people I care about, and that I’m falling well short of their expectations.

It’s a perspective I learned while growing up, and like so many wrong-headed beliefs and attitudes we pick up in life, it’s been sticky, like the pine-tree sap that used to cover my hands after a day climbing trees when I was young. It doesn’t scrape off or scrub off, it just has to wear off after a time.

Once you come to really believe that God loves you, that God has submerged you in his grace and made you good by the standards of his own glorious goodness, the next step is to absorb that truth and let it transform your heart and mind. The living God does not stand aloof from us, but walks beside us in life and speaks love and truth to us as we stumble along—if only we will hear what he has to say.

When the voices from the past speak words intended to bring us low, you can counter with the truth as God himself sees you: you are beloved, you are eternally valuable, you are God’s child, you are not measured by your performance, but by the endless swells of grace that have rolled out across history from the cross of Christ.

And over time, that sticky, dirt-encrusted tree sap of our many failures will be worn away by the relentless wave action of God’s powerful love, the unexplored depths of his mercy, and by the cleansing blessings of his grace.