failure Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

Permission to Make Mistakes

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 24, 2018
Post category:grace

A friend of mine called one afternoon, in tears. She messed up. No way around it, no sugar coating. She made a mistake. It left her feeling disqualified.

I resonate with the feeling. I’m an Enneagram 3-failure is my kryptonite. The accompanying shame is my greatest fear. That’s the kicker, right? The shame. The sucker punch in your gut that you can’t shake. That feeling not just that we did something wrong, but that there’s something wrong with us.

Mistakes happen. We all know that. We all make them. But there’s this pervasive sense that we shouldn’t.

If only we had planned better, worked harder, been smarter, caught ourselves sooner, it wouldn’t have happened. Mistakes feel like an indictment.

Lies, all lies.

We are too hard on ourselves

Gosh, I wish we could let ourselves make more mistakes. I wish I could let myself make more mistakes. Later that afternoon I texted my husband about a decision I made that resulted in us missing a deadline, and I told him, “now I’m questioning all my life choices.”

It was a $20 mistake.

His response, “So you’re questioning all your life choices over $20?”

Yes! Yes, I am. Let me have this! It feels proportionate!

But it’s not. I’ve said it before, and I will say it until my dying breath-we are too hard on ourselves. We are harder on ourselves than anyone else is. What feels disqualifying is just evidence of being human. It’s an opportunity to brush ourselves off, laugh, keep going, and maybe learn something in the process (like pay closer attention to deadlines).

When my friend called that day, she said, “It feels like grace has run out for me.” (One of those, “I know it’s not true, but right now it feels true,” statements).

I get it. That $20 mistake came on the heels of a much larger, much more life-changing mistake we made a few weeks prior regarding our son’s housing for college that stung. Hard. We’re understandably a little gun shy. It feels like grace could run out any minute.

But it won’t. It doesn’t. Not for us. Not for her either. Cause grace doesn’t run out. (say it again, this time with feeling!)

Grace. Doesn’t. Run. Out.

[ictt-tweet-inline]Mistakes don’t shut the door to grace-they open it. [/ictt-tweet-inline] They are an invitation to others to come alongside us and speak the kindness and gentleness we need. It’s easy to believe that people stick around because we’re doing it right. Every time we fail, we give others the chance to prove that those who really love us stick around regardless.

Look to The Source

Oh sure, the reality is some won’t. From some people, grace may run dry. But (and I say this with great love for all the people) people are not a reliable source of anything.

A source, yes, but not THE source. And those who can’t offer grace usually don’t because they struggle to receive it for themselves. People can’t give what they don’t have. So while we may hope for grace from others, we can always rely on the Source.

The Source of grace never runs dry. God is overflowing with unmerited, never-ending grace.

So let mistakes be a reminder that our souls are thirsty, and the well is never empty. Let them lead us to admit that we’re human, limited, fallible, weak, and needy. Failure humbles us and causes us (hopefully) to reach out for just a little more grace.

Be a grace giver

And friends, we need to grab that grace. Not only for ourselves but for others. The more we give ourselves permission to make mistakes, to be human, to stumble and fall and get back up, the more we let the people around us do it too.

Then we end up living in a world where we’re all less afraid. We take risks because failure isn’t fatal, just humbling. When we learn to live with mistakes, we become the grace givers. And the world needs more grace givers.

So where did you fail today? How will you give yourself permission to make some mistakes? There’s more grace for you. There’s more grace for all of us.

Why It’s Good When We See Olympians Fail

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 13, 2016
Post category:identity

Why It's Good When We See Olympians Fail

My daughter and I spent 3 hours Friday biting our nails and holding our breath, watching the US Women’s National Soccer team play Sweden in the quarterfinals of the Olympics. It came down to PKs, and they lost. They. Lost.

The team favored to win the gold is out of the Olympics.

If it was up to me, they’d still be blazing a trail toward the top of that podium. I’m going to have to boycott IKEA for awhile (although I really need some RÄTTVIK). But as it stands, these women will go home empty-handed.

I’m choosing to see the good in it.

Because here is a chance for our kids to see that you can be the best at something and still fail.

Sometimes the game doesn’t go your way. You miss the shot. The call isn’t fair. Sometimes you work as hard as you can for your dream and it falls short. You just can’t make it happen, no matter how amazing you are.

And if all that’s true, then our kids can see that being the best is a precarious platform on which to build your identity.

It is gone in a heartbeat. These Olympic games show us over and over that value built on achievement slips through our fingers based on hundredths of seconds and millimeters of space.

So we remind them that as we reach high for our dreams, we also sink our roots into the solid ground of who we are in Jesus.

That way, whatever the outcome, we are unfazed, because we aren’t building a home on our performance. It’s built on Him and it can’t be shaken.

Throughout these Olympics, we will see dreams rise and fall. What a great reminder to put our faith and hope in that which cannot be taken from us, to remember that what we do and how well we do it is never a reflection of our worth.

When Falling Is Good

What Being a Soccer Mom Teaches Me about Parenting

We Are All Glorious Messes

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 21, 2015
Post category:expectations grace identity

I just read a post written by a woman who called herself “that mom.” The mom who seems to be failing on all fronts. She says she’s in a rough patch. I get it. We’ve all been there.

I see a lot of posts like this lately, posts that lift the veil on the highly censored, cleaned up versions we often post of ourselves on Facebook, and show that life isn’t always that great.

It’s not as great as the posts of people who ran 10K this morning and toured Europe and whose kids invented something that will now be patented. (for the record, none of those things are true of me).

It’s good, this kind of transparency.

It breaks down walls. It combats shame. But what is discouraging to me is that it seems to create an either/or mentality, and a shaming of those who are doing “well.”

We celebrate those who own their messes (and we should) but we draw lines and separate them from those who claim to be hitting their marks. We call those “other people” fake or boastful.

The fact is, these lines don’t exist.

“That mom” may have had an off day, but I bet if you sit with her, you would wind up concluding that she’s actually doing a great job, even in the midst of her failings.

And the people who are posting their victories aren’t necessarily trying to say they always live at awesome. Granted, they might be, but maybe they don’t feel the freedom to admit that they fall short. That should evoke compassion from us, not shaming. Maybe they’re just saying, “I had a red letter day. Rejoice with me.” And we should.

We Are Both

Can we be the woman who messes up, but is being faithful and pressing on and sometimes has really great moments that she wants to celebrate?

Can we be the woman who is enjoying life and doing well, but let others into the fact that she’s sometimes less than her best?

There is space to affirm both. We can rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. God desires we enter in with both.

We aren’t either/or. We are both.

Success and failure don’t define us. We are both extraordinary and ordinary. There is light and dark in all of us.

We are glorious messes.

If we tend toward focusing on our failures, maybe it’s time we stopped and celebrated what is good. And if we are only showing the shiny parts of life, maybe it’s time to let some people see where we’re struggling.

We can be both.

Why We Should Fall More Often

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 24, 2015
Post category:courage faith grace growth

When It's Good to Fall — photo by Gina Butz

“I don’t want to fall.”
“I did it without falling!”
“I can’t end the day on a fall!”

These are the kinds of phrases that frequently came out of our kids’ mouths last week as we braved the ski hills of Vermont. To them, the goal is not to fall. In fact, a fall in their minds negates anything that came before it. Falling is ruinous.

I confess, that’s often my main objective too. At the very least, I don’t want to fall when small children are deftly skiing past me. Or watching me from the chair lift. So I happily stay on the hills that boast “Slow. Ski Learning Area” signs. No shame.

But when our focus is on not falling, something happens to us mentally. Fear increases. Enjoyment decreases. We take fewer risks. Stick to the smaller hills. We miss out.

Our falls begin to define how we view the day, rather than being blips in an otherwise fun time. They tell us we have failed, rather than informing a better way to ski.

I wish this problem stuck to the ski hills. Too often we take this stance in life. A fear of falling gives us tunnel vision. We don’t want people to look, laugh, judge. We want to do it well every time. Looking at the risk causes us to pull back. We forget that we’re still learning to do life, and that with bigger challenges comes bigger potential for mistakes, failure, and stumbling. Most of all, we forget that falling is actually a good sign.

Falling means we’re trying. It means we’re going out of our comfort zones. We’re braving the harder paths, forging new places where we’re not sure. Falling is a natural part of learning to do anything – walking, running, biking, skiing, parenting, loving, writing, friendship, life. Falling is good because it is proof that we are living openly.

So where do we need to risk falling today?

“Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” 2 Corinthians 6:11, The Message

Dogs, Deer, and What Drives My Heart

Post author:Gina B
Post published:November 15, 2013
Post category:growth personal

Living where we do, we see a lot of deer. I mean a lot. Like to the point where it’s almost blasé to see them. They’re more common than squirrels.

Enter Scout. It’s always been our dream that our dog could run freely in the yard without an unsightly fence to keep her in. We installed an invisible fence and trained her to stay within the boundaries.

The problem is, she’s a smart pup. She knows when she’s not wearing that big ugly collar. Typically she’s still content to stay in the yard, but when she sees deer, all bets are off. She’ll come back later muddy, tired, and happy.

Enter the “deervangelist,” one of our neighbors. He loves the deer seemingly more than anything. One of his three lots is devoted to their comfort and feeding. When we first arrived in the neighborhood, he came over and gave us an earful about how we need to do our part to protect the deer. He even showed us a photo album of them. In some pictures they were eating food out of his mouth. Can I get a collective “ew”?

So my stage is set. Last week, Scout bolted and found her way to the deervangelist’s empty lot where the deer had retreated for safety. Within a few minutes, I got another visit from my neighbor telling me that I need to do a better job of keeping my dog in our yard, as well as another offer to see the pictures. I declined.

The next day, she was off again. This time, while I waited for another visit, it was my neighbor to the north (the one I have only ever heard yelling) who called for me to get my #$%& dog out of his yard. Thankfully she came back on her own.

And that was when my heart sank a little into shame. Why? It took me awhile to understand it myself, but it all goes back to what drives me. If you read my last post about houses, you know that I like success. I like performing well. The dog/deer combination made it challenging for me to do that. In fact, they were (in my mind) making me look like a failure. I had been called out twice in two days as someone incompetent in restraining her pet.

The upside of this is the fact that God helped me see it. Oftentimes we sink into shame and we don’t recognize it or acknowledge it. In my experience, when that happens, it can make me more likely to interpret the rest of my day through the same lens. Instead, I was able to do a little self-talk about the whole situation that helped me let it go. I’m thankful that I’ve been growing in seeing what drives my heart and how to respond with grace.

A dog and some deer. You never know what God will use.