Our Mistakes Can Be Gifts If We'll Let Them Be

There's a scene in the television show Landman. A daughter is distraught over the breakup with a boyfriend her father had predicted would end in a breakup. The daughter asks her father, "why are you always right", to which he responds, "because I've spent my whole life being wrong and never forgetting any of the lessons I've learned."

Over the years in my work trying to prevent substance misuse, especially among our youth, I've had parents ask me, "how am I supposed to talk to my kids about the dangers of using substances when I used them myself?"

I am quick to tell them that many of the giant difficulties in my life can be tied to using substances as a teen and young adult, and that those are the stories I tell most when talking to my kids or any kids about using substances.

I no longer run from my imperfections, I embrace them. My imperfections don't take away from my credibility, in fact, they ARE my credibility.

I'm not sure why any parent would feel the need to hide their mistakes in life from their kids. I don't know why they would be afraid to talk openly about choices they made that resulted in outcomes more unfavorable than a different choice likely would have produced.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we prepare our kids for mistakes more than we prepare them for perfection.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we don't beat ourselves up for mistakes, no matter how old we are, and get immediately to the work of figuring out the lessons to be learned.

And shared.

Do we not realize that most of the folks advising us on what we should do in books and on podcasts and in TED Talks got to a place of advising us after years or decades of experiencing the results of doing the opposite of what they are now suggesting we should do?

Do we not realize the pastors populating our pulpits got their taking the routes of Moses and David and Abraham, the broken and often quite sinful paths? Pastors are often not preaching about the road to avoid as much as they are about the lessons learned on roads they should have avoided. (I do wish more would clarify that in their preaching).

When we come to know better and start doing better, we aren't hypocrites, we are wise.

When I suggest that my boys should do some things opposite of what I did, I'm not spreading hypocrisy, I'm offering them hard and often painfully earned wisdom.

We get to decide the value of our mistakes. They are burdens or gifts, and that is often determined by our ability to mine the lessons and gift them to others.

There is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect parent, trying to convince anyone otherwise might be the biggest mistake of them all.