My friend phoned me, overjoyed. She had finally passed her driving test. She had persevered through many almost-passes and tough instructors, earning her license at last. When she had been struggling through the “failures,” my mother had encouraged her, saying, “Nobody asks how many times it took to pass your driving test. No matter how many times you try, once you’ve got your license, you’ve got it.”
I hadn’t thought about perseverance in that way before. But it’s true—nobody will ask how many cakes burned before you got the delicious one you’re serving them. If you make it to the top of Mount Everest, you’ve made it to the top. The failures along the way do not detract from the final success.
It’s a very comforting thought. It came back to me when I was thinking about the poem by E. A. Guest, “It Couldn’t Be Done.”
[He] buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried, he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
I noticed for the first time that it doesn’t say he did it right away. I had always imagined it as a kind of quick 1-2-3 story: “Man sees mountain, everyone says it can’t be done, he buckles in and voilà! Victory is his!” This was the mental picture I always had of the poem. But now, I see it differently. Maybe his “tackling the thing” had taken weeks or months or years. But none of that factored in to the final result: He did it! That says it all!
Sometimes, when I’ve faced a lot of obstacles and failure, I can’t see the value of trying again. Success and what it will give us can feel like a fantasy that we’re better off giving up on. Whenever my friend went through another almost-passed-but-not-quite result with her driving test, she felt like it wasn’t worth it. Despite that, she tried again. And again. Until, finally, she got her driver’s license and then she knew, it was worth it!
We can fail or disappoint ourselves; others can fail us or try to stop us. But we can always try again. We have a God-given right to keep trying. “A righteous person will fall seven times, and then get up again” (Proverbs 24:16 NET). We are given the privilege to choose, and we can always choose to give it another go.
We have the license to try.