I used to think failure was something you got past. Like a bad intersection. You sit through the red light, you wait, and then you go on with your day and try not to think about it.
But that’s not how it works. Failure doesn’t just happen to you. It stays. It changes the way you walk into a room. The way you raise your hand in a meeting. The way you let someone get close or keep them at arm’s length.
I was thinking about this late last night. Couldn’t sleep. Went back to a book I’ve been reading—The Kindness Code by Pastor Yvonne Barnes. And I landed on something I’d highlighted weeks ago and then ignored. She says failure will always point you in the right direction.
My first reaction was annoyance. That sounds like something you put on a poster with a mountain and a sunrise. But she doesn’t say it like a cheerleader. She says it like someone who’s been through things that didn’t make sense at the time.
And here’s what I’ve been turning over in my head.
A few years ago, I took a job that was wrong for me. I knew it three weeks in. But I stayed for two years. Because leaving felt like admitting I’d made a mistake. And I didn’t want to be the person who made mistakes. I wanted to be the person who powered through. Who could handle anything.
Spoiler: I could not handle it. I got tired. Bitter. Started snapping at people who didn’t deserve it. Came home and stared at walls. And the whole time, I told myself the problem was the job. The boss. The commute. The whatever.
But Barnes has this quote about how when a person can blame you for everything that’s wrong in their life that was already wrong, they’re failing to accept responsibility for their own unhappiness. And I read that and thought—oh. That’s me. Not with other people. With myself.
I was blaming the situation for what I was too scared to change.
The Kindness Code doesn’t let you hide behind that. Barnes keeps bringing it back to your own hands. What you have power over. What you’re choosing, even when you say you aren’t choosing anything.
She writes about how when you fail to thrive, you hurt yourself from receiving the greatest blessings. Not because God is punishing you. But because you’re standing in the doorway and refusing to walk through. And after a while, the doorway just… closes. Not dramatically. Quietly. While you were busy being right about why things weren’t working.
I think that’s what failure actually teaches you. Not resilience in some heroic sense. Just the simple, boring fact that you have to move. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re embarrassed. Even when you don’t know where you’re going.
Barnes says allowing yourself to fail helps you allow yourself to win in the end. And I used to think that was backwards. But now I think she’s saying something else. That if you can’t tolerate being wrong, you’ll never risk being right about something that matters. You’ll stay small. Safe. Stuck.
I quit that job eventually. Not gracefully. I cried in my car first. Called a friend and talked in circles for an hour. But I quit. And nothing dramatic happened. No gold stars. No parade. Just a Tuesday where I sent an email and then sat in the quiet and felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Relief.
Not happiness. Just relief. The kind you feel when you stop carrying something heavy.
The Kindness Code has this line about how you can’t allow what you can’t control to affect you. And that’s the real lesson failure taught me. Not that I should try harder. Not that I should be tougher. But that I should stop trying to control things that were never mine to control in the first place. Other people’s opinions. The timing of things. Whether something “looks bad” on some imaginary resume.
I still mess this up. Regularly. Just this morning I caught myself spiraling about something that hasn’t even happened yet. But now I have a different question when I catch myself. Not “how do I fix this?” but “what am I afraid to let go of?”
Barnes says hold things loosely so when it’s time to let it go, it knows how to let you go. I want that. I want to be that kind of person. The one who doesn’t have to be pried open. Who can release something and still feel whole. I’m not there yet. But I’m closer than I was before I read her book. And for tonight, that’s enough.
