My daughter was painting in the living room the other night. Acrylics on canvas—we do a lot of that around here. She had this picture in her mind, something bright and bold, and halfway through, she messed up. A misplaced brushstroke or a smudge, I’m not even sure. But I saw the shift in her body. Shoulders dropped. The brush hit the floor. Tears followed close behind.
“I ruined it,” she said. “It’s not going to be beautiful anymore.”
Maybe it was perfectionism. Maybe just a long day and a dream that didn’t turn out quite right. But I sat next to her and said, “The beautiful thing about painting is—we can fix our mistakes.”
And she did.
Once the tears and the paint dried, she picked that brush back up. She worked the same canvas, layering over the mess. And what came out was a masterpiece. It’s hanging in our foyer now, right where everyone can see it.
When my daughter sees that painting hanging up, I want her to remember something more than colors and shapes. I want her to remember that beauty came after the breakdown. That she didn’t walk away. That she finished.
And if my kids ever read this, I hope they hear it loud and clear:
You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to keep painting.
We talk a lot about success. But if we’re honest, real growth is found in the foundry of failure.
Fail smart. Fail often.
Here’s the truth: Failure isn’t just part of the process—it is the process. The best ideas, the strongest relationships, the most grounded people I know…They’ve all been through it. And they learned to stop hiding their scars.
But let me be clear—failing for failure’s sake? That’s foolishness. Don’t romanticize it. Fail smart means we pay attention. We reflect. We grow. When we can, we learn from other people’s hard-won lessons so we don’t have to repeat every single one ourselves.
Take a look at the men in Scripture:
- David let lust lead, and it wrecked lives.
- Abraham ran when he should’ve trusted.
- Moses let his anger get the best of him and buried a man in the sand.
- Peter promised faithfulness, then folded when it counted.
And yet—every single one of them was restored. Redeemed. Still used for greatness. Sometimes God lets us fall flat so He can rebuild us from the ground up.
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