TOFW...Seek for the Good and Failure

At time out for women or as I will call it in all future posts TOFW, they have a theme each year.  This years theme was Seek for the Good.  When they introduced this one thing they said that really stood out to me is that to seek is the opposite of passively waiting for good in your life.  It is actively reaching out and discovering it.  So the goal this weekend was to Seek out the good.  One thing they challenged us to do in the beginning is to make a list of things that we are good at.  This was tougher than I thought it was be.  Just five things...that's not that much.  And honestly, I know I'm good at things, but verbally saying them or writing them for the whole world to know that you think that of yourself is pretty intimidating.  I couldn't really do it at that point on Friday night.  I was just to self conscience about it.  I did get one.  I am good at cake decorating.  But even when I went to say that, I really wanted to say, but not as good as some.  Why do we feel the need to mimize our talents.  But we talked about that this weekend too and I will go into all of that later in another post.  And in that other post or at the end I will tell you the list I could come up with at the end of the weekend. 

So that all these posts seperately aren't too long I will break them up into one or two talks/musical presesnters at a time.  This first one was Jason Wright.  He started out by saying he wanted to talk about a very uplifting subject...failure.  He taught that we think about failure all wrong.  Look at the following people:
Ford had 2 failed companies before Ford Motor Cars, Michael Jordan got cut from his HS basketball team, Elvis got told he didn't have what it took and to go back to trucking.  Grisham was rejected 16 times.  Macys Dept store had 7 failed businessess before it opened it's doors.  Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade, Fred Astaire was told he can't act, can't sing and can't dance when he started out.  Nephi failed twice to get the plates, and Jason Wright failed 7th grade, was in speech therapy for stuttering all through school, was rejected as an author by 20 publishers, had several failed companies, did not get voted into the office he ran for before his first book was published. 

"It's okay that not everyone appreciates that which I create.  Instead of becoming tougher and thicker, my failures can turn into something so sweet if I just open my heart more to God instead of what man things" 

After 20 publishers said Christmas Jars won't see the light of day.  His sweet wife convinced him to Stop, Listen, and fix it.  And he did and Deseret Book published his book.  But these he said weren't some of his bigger failures.  He failed at grieving over the death of his father.  He listed to the world, "Be tough, Be stronger, Just let it go" etc and as he put it really failed at grieving.  Then he did the important thing.  He Stopped, He listened to God, and he fixed it and grieved in the right way.  God knows our failures.  Not just the ones we've had but the ones yet to come.  And he stands ready to teach us if we will just stop and listen.  No failure needs to be the end in the story, but it can be that point in the story where we make the big change and accomplish something great. 

I liked that.  I need to remember that at times, and I need to help my children understand that.  Part of how I think I can help my kids is be more forgiving of myself and look at those things that I'm just not getting right yet and see what I can do to change it for the better.  Here's to looking at my failures  in a better way.