Failure

It's Monday morning and my mind is still wondering about what happened this past weekend. We had a huge game and everything was going our way until "it" happened. "It" is the situation we all want to be in as competitors. We all have an eternal hunger to be placed in a situation where what we do can determine the outcome. Those situations we are placed in I feel like help define us. I had the ball with the ability to make the game winning shot. I was hungry for the chance to make the winning play for my team and lead us to a much deserved win. But then "it" happened. I was dribbling the ball waiting for the opportunity to make my move and all the sudden I see the ball rolling out of bounds. My heart sunk into my stomach and I realized that I had just lost the game for my team. I've never had a situation like that happen to me in all my years of playing this wonderful game. We ended up losing the game and you can only imagine the heart wrenching feeling I had on the walk back into the locker room. I felt like I had let my teammates down. I've always felt that in any team game the worst thing you can do as a teammate is to let the guys in that locker room down. That night after the game I couldn't sleep at all. I could only keep replaying that image of the ball rolling out of bounds. That next morning I woke up and prayed about what happened. I asked God why would he let something like this happen to me and consequently my team. Then he spoke to me and told me that we all have to go through these failures at times. We all have situations in which we feel that we have everything it takes to thrive in those situations. But as God always does, he flips the script on us. I had to figure out if I was going to sit around and sulk about the situation or if I was going to move on and learn from it. Was I going to let this simple mistake define me as a basketball player or was I going to use this situation to make me better. Many people have seen all the great game winners that Michael Jordan has hit in his career, but what people don't know is for as many shots as he did make, he also missed more than he made. When we fail, it's up to us to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. We must use that failure to fuel us. To ignite something in us to be better, greater, and stronger. You gain strength when you fail because you know that if you continue to strive for greatness, you will succeed more than you will fail. I won't let this define me or define my life. What about you?