Winning by inches

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.” –Louis L’Amour

Fail with Glory!

Here’s the deal: it’s hard to stay focused in church when you have a squirming six-month-old who just wants to grab your nose or rip pages out of the hymnbook or other such painfully adorable baby activities. So I wasn’t really paying much attention to the closing hymn until the end of the second verse, when I hit the words “If we fail, we fail with glory.”

And the first thing I thought of was all my bloggy and writerly friends, and our constant discussion of how gut-wrenchingly terrifying it is to put our work out for others to read and critique and reject. And how unavoidable failure seems in a profession where you have to plaster a wall with rejection letters before you get that golden letter, the possibility that someone might like your book enough to publish it. And how even once your book is out there, you have to face the inevitable disgruntled readers who didn’t like this or that or the other about your book.

But I, for one, would rather fail while putting myself out there and working for success than fail because I didn’t ever try.

So put away your fear of failure and take on the mindset that if you fail, you’ll fail with glory. After all, failure is only the end if you don’t pick yourself up and try again. Go after your life’s dreams, “Patient, firm, and persevering . . . no event nor danger fearing . . . pains, nor toils, nor trials heeding, and in heav’n’s good time succeeding.” (God Speed the Right)

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