Failing in February

Our Saturday’s are normally spent at home: bacon cooking, eggs being scrambled, fruit being cut, and drinking too many cups of vanilla flavored coffee. We lounge in workout clothes and pajamas. Saturday mornings in our world break the Monday through Friday rushing routine of packing lunches, quick on-the-go breakfasts, and the chaos and crunch of heading off to school and to work.

Sometimes I de-clutter, or Jordan builds something I have been begging to have put together. I start a load of wash; we clean up the lingering clothes and shoes that pile up at the pit of the bottom of the stairs. There isn’t a true agenda, but we have subtly fallen into the pattern of some cleaning, and some rest, some play, and some laundry. It’s pretty mundane, and pretty needed at the end of our weeks. In some ways I love Saturday mornings because those clothes that have been sitting on the stool on the front porch will finally find their home in the basket to be washed upstairs. It feels like victory! Cleaning, organizing, de-cluttering, building, and throwing away! Domestic victory indeed! And other Saturday mornings, a bit of domestic dread: the hammering, the finding the right place, the deciding: keep or throw away?

I think that’s why this particular Saturday in the middle of February stood out to me in the way that it did. I was off to an audition, I was headed down Crown Valley, up the toll road, and off to Newport Beach to read a piece I had written, on a stage to a group of six women

In my past life, stepping on to stage, presenting, pitching, it all came to me as easily as my Saturday morning suburban routine had become. Convincing a crowd, lighting up a room, encouraging, selling, instructing, leading, it was all so easy peasy.

These days, normal are the days of motherhood: naptime’s, park times, bedtimes, pickup’s and drop offs, and meal plans. Easy is most definitely not driving away from suburbia to stand on a stage. Its vulnerable, it was of my box, and it was exactly where I needed to be that Saturday morning in the early spring.

I knew the moment I decided to audition the exact piece that I would read. But in that moment, when six ladies shook my hand, and I passed out the script, I panicked for a split second about the piece I was about to read. The vulnerability about what I was about to do came rolling in, and the rawness of my own insecurities I was about to reveal. But then in a holy moment of courage, I poured that panic into boldness; and I spoke to their silence, their still eyes, and gave it all I had.

It was over in six minutes, and I was in and out the door within fifteen. It took about two weeks of wondering to find out that I wasn’t picked, that I didn’t make the cut.

It was weird, in some ways, I knew that I completely gave it my best shot, and also, as I walked out that door, I knew I wasn’t going to be coming back.

It was something that I absolutely wanted to do, a team that I wanted to be apart of, a journey that sounded exciting, and a job that would have been all mine outside of the walls of motherhood. It was right up my ally! I was the right fit I thought; this was going to be a place where I could use my writing, my speaking, and my gifts! What could be better than this?!

And, yet, I failed at making the cut in February. I wasn’t the fit.

That Saturday morning I could have stayed home and de-cluttered, and organized, and tossed in two more loads of laundry. I could have kept the rest and routine of our Saturdays sacred, and a part of me for a split second thought that was what I should  have done since I didn’t get the gig anyway.

And I then I think of my daughters, and about me… the trying out for the million and two teams that lie before them, and the teams that I might still need to try out for too. And with abounding intensity, I wanted to scream to that part of myself, the hardest critic after all, NO! Go for it, and try out for the team! Take the next shot, and the next chance, and then try to jump through the next open door with wild abandon, even if you don’t make the cut…GO for it, Girl, Go for it.

May we all have a holy boldness to try out, and to keep trying out. To run the race, and work hard at the things we love, the things were confident were called too. May we step out from the doorframe of fear, and into the room filled with faith. May I brave, and continue to step out of suburbia and on to stage every once in a while on a Saturday morning.

And what I hope for my girls, I still hope for me. That we would have courage to fail, that our fears of failure, of our own past failures, of others opinion, that they would never, not for a second, keep us from trying out for the team.