Failure is dotted throughout the map of my life. I have taken random turns, climbed rocky hills, and stopped at unknown destinations. I have tried to learn from my misfires and defeats. Failure has pushed me to see the real me and it has helped me chart my course. 

Without a doubt being a woman is totally legit. Everyday women around the world slip into our imaginary superhero costumes. We symbolically pull on our blue leotard with the gold belt cinched tight across our waist. We slip into our make believe knee high red boots and try to walk with confidence and determination. The Superwoman symbol projects our awesomeness as we go throughout our day endlessly serving around us. As we move on to our next assignment our bold red cape quietly flaps behind us letting our family, community, and loved ones know that they will be back again real soon to carry on. Sometimes our fictitious suit doesn’t quite fit us and it makes us extremely uncomfortable. There is a quiet reverence that resides within our soul as we partner with God. We know we can make adjustments and become unconquerable. Our blue suit gets stained and dirty from organizing our homes, working to help provide, cooking nutritious meals, rallying around our children’s baseball teams, kneeling to teach our child to pray, rocking a sick grandbaby, mentoring a youth, supporting a friend, teaching children in the community to read, supporting others around us and sometimes we even climb to the top of the 4-H ladder. At night when we are exhausted and our pretend Superwoman suit hits the side of the laundry basket and we pull our red boots off of our sore feet we learn to turn it all over to God.    

Looking back to 1988 there are a lot of women who stretch on their red and blue hero suits every morning at the crack of dawn. They share their talents and they often step up to help me and other children in my small community gain a skill. Some teach piano lessons, others teach dance, woodworking, guitar, and singing lessons are a few of the talents sprinkled throughout our small town. 

Unbeknownst to me I have signed up to join a 4-H woodworking/painting class. I am over the top excited. For some reason I have an inner pulse that is always beating the word create, create, create. I am not sure what this pulse is exactly directing me to but I cannot wait to learn how to cut wood and paint. I step outside of our front door onto our hot cement pad and I look to the right and I can see the 4-H teachers’ new home sitting on a hill. Looking at her house on the hill the wheat grass in the field is tall and green. It makes waves in the summer breeze as it gently bends with the wind and in a month or so it will be ready to harvest. I am so excited for the upcoming class I almost want to march through the three foot tall grain and wait at the teachers door until the class starts. I love to watch the tall stalks of grain move gracefully from a distance but I know from first hand experience that I would arrive at the top of the hill itching like crazy. I will wait for dad to take me in his blue Chevrolet.

On the short drive to the 4-H class the windows are down and the summer breeze blows through the cab of the pick-up and I think about my teacher and all of her amazing skills. She is a middle aged Superwoman who’s ‘S’ is stamped largely on her chest. She is talented at sewing, cooking, and she bakes homemade bread. The teacher also loves to create. I know that I will be successful with her as my leader. I step up to the front door with my A-game on. I am going to be in the top of the class and everyone will revere my woodworking skills. I just know it. 

We sit down in her living room on the floor around her coffee table and I notice a detailed handmade quilt hung over a ladder displayed for everyone to see. Last week I sat in my grandmother’s basement on a cold metal chair and she let me put in a few stitches on her quilt. I thought that was pure torture. I cannot stand the slow progress I made with those older wiser women moving at the pace of snails. They sit on those chairs all day and chat about the latest gossip moving their sharp little silver needles up and down and in and out. If my 4-H teacher did that quilt all by herself I automatically have respect for her but that is not the direction I want to take my own creativity. I am not made for slow, detailed, and painful processes.

Our leader hands us out packets with instructions and talks with a smile pasted on her face for an hour. She directs us to the door where our parents are waiting. Aww shucks! I didn’t think we would be sitting around listening to instructions! I want to be rip roaring my 2×4’s through the saw in the woodshop. I imagined myself completing this project today. I like to start a project, work on it with as little detail and effort as possible, and then race to the finish line with a beautiful finished product. That is what I thought this club would be. I will have to wait one more week and I hope we will be able to at least see the saw. I walk towards my dads pick-up with a little bit of wind taken from my sails. I lay the instructions on the seat of the pick-up and we drive off knowing that I will have to wait another week before any of the magic begins. 

The following week we are given strict instructions on using the saw. Our teacher helps us learn the safety guidelines. Then one by one we each get a turn at the saw. I sit on the couch nervous and giddy as I wait for my turn on the saw. She calls my name, “Dari, it’s your turn to come and cut your wood.” I bounce in step behind her as we walk out to her garage. A large upright saw sits in a dark corner of her garage. “Hmmm”, I say to myself, “I imagined the woodshop to look less like a car garage and more like ‘This Old House’s workshop’ on channel 10.” The leader motions to the side of the machine and instructs me to turn the big red switch upwards. I flip the switch and the chain immediately hums through the metal plate. I lay my wood down on the table and I cut out the pencil drawn lines on the wood. I push the wood through the saw and it cuts with ease. I hurry through my straight lines and I lose no time as I come in sliding round my corners. I finish my cuts and I hastily shut off the heavy switch on the side of the machine. My teacher looks at me with surprise and blinks several times at me. I smile widely because I know that I was the quickest ban saw cutter in the group. She pats me on the back and we walk back into the room. 

The next week we get to hammer the nails into the sides and connect our support and top altogether. I am so excited to see my boards take the form of a bench. I hammer carelessly into the sides of my wood while some girls are marking and measuring precisely where their nails will enter their wooden bench. I just want to be finished with this ongoing project that should have been completed last week. I am all ready to pour the paint on. I sit and tap my fingers on the side of my cheek as I am slumped over waiting for the ‘slow ones’. 

Finally the last week of our 4-H class is here and we get to paint our benches a muted cream color and then stencil a girl on top that slightly resembles an african american cabbage patch kid. I blow on my bench and try to hurry the wet paint so I can slosh down my stencil and dab in the colors with my stencil brush. I secure my stencil to the almost dried wood and I choose my colors for the cut out doll. I love these big blue sponge stencil brushes. There is something exciting about dabbing in your paint and then pushing in the color through the stencil. I pull the beige masking tape from the sides of my stencil. A little paint from the wood comes up from the paint because I didn’t let my bench completely dry. Ooops! I dabbed a little too much paint onto the doll’s face and now she has a bonus cheek on the side of her face. Oh well, I quickly pull the rest of the stencil off of the bench and I am proud to be the owner of this imperfect bench.

I look around at the other benches and some of them look similar to mine and others are gleaming with perfect stencil dabbing. “Wow, the details!” I say as I tell the girl sitting across from me. She smiles and says, “Thanks.” My neighbor’s bench looks slightly worse than mine. I elbow her, “niiiccceeee!” She stares back at me confused at the comment. 

Everyone’s benches are finished and it is time for the teacher to make the rounds and evaluate us against a particular standard. She holds mine up and observes that the paint did not get all the way under the bench. The nails are not matching and they are hammered in crooked on both sides. The paint was not carefully stenciled and the final blow to my woodworking career is that my bench wobbles. She tests it on the coffee table in front of the class. It clicks from side to side as she holds pressure on the top of the bench. My face reddens and I want to sink under the table. I want to cry out, “I hate the details! This is just like my Grandmother’s quilts. Too much detail!” My bench is unacceptable, low-grade, and second-rate according to the 4-H standards.    

 I carry my below average bench home and I swore I would keep it forever. I placed it perfectly at the foot of our blue bathroom vanity in the main level of our house. I want a reminder that I made this imperfect bench. I want to look in the mirror with pride every time I stand on it and teeter back and forth.  

Lastly, the bench was imperfect and I kept that off-kelter bench for more than twenty years. It was a reminder to me that I failed. I didn’t understand the lesson as a child. I know God was kindly directing me away from detailed projects. [haha] Through my failed attempts at detailed projects I have found that I have become more of a free-stylist. This pathway has offered me all different kinds of creative avenues. I admire others who are in the details of creating. Failure has opened opportunities for me to take another direction or look at something with a different perspective. I have bumped into my nemesis ‘the detail’ a few times. We have worked a few things out and because I often fail I am Learning to rely on God and let him guide me to what He wants me to be.    

Here are three things you could try to help you master a skill set. 

1. Try something new. It doesn’t work out? Realize that failure is a part of the process. I love to create but I was looking in the wrong creative department. I found through this process as a young girl that my benches would be freestyle benches and unrestricted by measurement and perfect stencil patterns. {little did I know that off the cuff creativity would become popular.}
2. Progression, practice, and planning can help you be successful in learning a new skill. After I was married I bought a bandsaw and I cut a lot of wood. My pieces had my name written all over them because I created and worked on my own style through practicing.  
3. Learn to stop, rest, and re-evaluate. Trying new things can quickly overwhelm us. Learning to take small breaks can rejuvenate us and give us energy to carry on. 

https://zapier.com/blog/learning-new-skills/