The Success of Failure
Tera Bradham
I could hear the excitement in the stands as spectators started cheering for me. I knew I was ahead of the rest of the girls in my heat, so I guessed the audience was cheering for one reason: I was on track to qualify for Olympic Trials. I gunned down my lane, pulling water and shooting forward from the frog kick that propelled me. I touched the wall, expecting to hear the shouts of my teammates and the clapping of people in the stands. Instead, I heard silence.
I read the seconds of my time and thought I had made it. But then in the millisecond it took my eyes to read that the tenths were too high for the qualification standard, reality struck a deadly blow. I had missed the cut by a few tenths of a second. Again.
After beginning my career ranked the fastest swimmer in the country for my age group in multiple events, I had dreamed of going to the Olympics. My coaches believed I had a chance, and I planned to prove their confidence was not ill-founded. But then I tore my shoulder at the end of a race. Then doctors didn’t find anything for seven years. Add in a near-death experience with a nicked artery in my lung, three surgeries, countless compensation injuries, and finally the discovery of a degenerating biceps tendon, and the road had been arduous. After surgeons finally discovered the source of my pain, cut an inch of my tendon out, and rebuilt 75 percent of my shoulder capsule, I believed it would bring God the most glory to return to the top of the sport.
But God had other plans. Even swimming for a Top-4 program in the country at Texas A&M, my shoulder did not recover as I had planned. I gave up the ability to swim nine practices a week and challenged myself to be the best I could be in only six swims a week. I changed the events I swam. I settled for making my goal to qualify for the Olympic Trials, since my body made it clear the Olympics were out of the question. I thought that at least if I could qualify for the Trials, no one could ever take that accomplishment away from me. I could say I ended my career with the best in the sport.
And again, after 10 years of trials, I had missed the cut by a margin defined in tenths of a second. What’s worse is that I believed God had told me to write a book about my story. Who would want to read a rollercoaster that ended in me not accomplishing what I set out to do? How could that be motivational?
I’m so glad God doesn’t listen to our ideas of what would be the best story. He is the Master Storyteller, the one who wove together millenia of time together so His son, Jesus, would complete over 50 prophecies in near impossible odds. And I have the audacity to tell Him that I think I could have written my story a better way? Think again.
I love 1 Kings 1:18, where God is talking to King David, and He says, “Because it was in your heart to build a temple for my name, you did well to have this in your heart.” This wasn’t a test. It wasn’t an American version of Christianity that said “once you fix your heart issues, then God will give you what you wanted before.” This was the reality of God saying David could not fulfill his dream of building God’s temple, but instead his son would accomplish the task. But nonetheless, God said it was good that David had this dream in his heart.
A lot of athletes believe we can glorify God through our sport, and rightfully so. There is a divine joy in stewarding a gift that God gave you to the best of your ability, and I believe when we pursue excellence in our sports, it brings a smile to God’s face and an applause to his hands. But we so often fail to think that our best is good enough if it wasn’t the best in the world.
I had it in my heart to go to the Olympics. Based on my early successes, that seemed like a reasonable dream. It made so much sense that God would be glorified by the most insane comeback story I could imagine. His word says that he will do “abundantly more than we can ask or imagine,” so if I could imagine that comeback, God’s will for me had to be something even better than what I imagined! Perhaps a world record or a motivational speaking career would be the golden cherry on top of my dream!
With these thoughts, imagine my confusion when my career ended the way it did. But little did I know, God was applauding my obedience all the same. There is absolutely something special about making it to the pinnacle of any sport, and my aim is not to take anything away from those who have accomplished such an incredible feat. But I believe most of us cannot accept the end of our career, our season, or our race with joy, because our definition of success is flawed.
God is waiting with open arms to give us a hug, to tell us that He’s proud of us, and to say “you did well to have that in your heart.” If we were to lean into that hug, the hands that healed nations would wrap around us, and the tears would flow as we sobbed in the shadow of His wings. And after He let us get the emotions all out, He would gently whisper, “I have something better in mind.” We would raise our eyes to meet the gaze of the one who knew us before any speck of matter ever came to be, and we would crumble yet again with the love we found in their depths. Unable to bear our unworthiness, we would try to look away as His gentle finger held our chin up to look at Him. And as we met His gaze, through our disappointment, our anger, and our confusion, God would ask us: “Do you trust me?”
If you’re facing some disappointment today, perhaps God is wanting to wrap you in His arms and tell you that you did well to have that accomplishment in your heart. That would have glorified God, but that is not the only way God could have used you.
While I failed to qualify for a meet, I did not fail to learn the lessons God had for me along the way. While the swimming world might have said I had no reason to write a book, the eternal King said He was going to make His name known through the nations with my obedience to the true story He wanted to write. While I became insecure about my failure, God knew that the failure of a sport would mean the success of a lifetime.
For what I didn’t see at the time was that the more failure I endured, the more disappointment I surrendered to God, the more beautiful a story could be written, the better character I could develop, and the more clearly I could see the unseen. Success reveals who people are on the surface, while failure reveals who they are at the core.
I didn’t understand that three years later God would put it on my heart to start a ministry for people who are marginalized with chronic pain. I didn’t see the book or the podcast or the retreats that God would use me to build because of all the hardship I had endured. I saw the lost audience of little swimmers, but I didn’t see the chronic pain warriors who were waiting for me to round the corner of my disillusionment.
I had no idea what was coming, and I’m so glad I didn’t. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have thought finishing my swimming career would have been worth it. I wouldn’t have given my whole heart to the effort, and thus I wouldn’t have learned the lessons God had for me in my sport.
God has a beautiful story for you, too. It might end with exactly what God put on your heart, or it might end with something entirely different. God is a God of the impossible, the mysterious, and the incredible. I don’t know what His plans are for you, but I guarantee if you persevere, surrender, and learn, you will find yourself smack dab in the middle of a greater story than anything you could have ever written for yourself. He will work it all together for your good. Just keep fighting and know that perhaps your greatest failure will be your greatest success.