Failure

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you failed at a situation, or in some cases the entire day?  I do all the time.  I had a situation Thursday morning.  

Thursday morning all the youth, with the exception of the 16-18 year olds in the vanguard company,  met in a parking lot at 5:30am to carpool to trek.  I was there to make sure all the youth that were supposed to be there arrived and that my drivers were there.  We were waiting on 1 last kid to arrive (there's always someone).  While waiting I  noticed another ward decided to use this same parking lot as a meeting point.  So, when a boy and him mom (who weren't on my list) walked up to me that I did not recognize, I assumed they belonged to the other ward so I sent them off to the other wards area.   Luckily there was a male leader that went and tracked him down and brought him back over.  I managed to make sure another boy rode in a car up to trek with him in an effort to redeem myself from initially brushing them off.  They had just moved in and it is just the 2 of them.  I left feeling bad that I didn't provide the best first impression. Looking back on the situation I remembered seeing the supplies in their hands that shouldn't have been there because we had loaded everything up the night before.  I should have clued into something being off and took the time to find out.  I can blame the early hour and the chaos, but to the person who feels slighted none of those excuses matter, so I prayed that my failure was made smaller in their eyes.  I know it's impossible to be everything to everyone and that we make mistakes, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

Don't they all look so darn cute in their pioneer outfits?  I know every leader says this, but it doesn't make it any less true, we have the best youth!

The happy ending to my story is that yesterday at church I heard from another parent of one of my yw. While I was feeling like a failure in one situation I did the completely right thing in another that morning and I had no idea.  One of my Mia Maids had arrived that morning and was feeling like backing out of going.  Her mom had told her 2 daughters that they needed to want to go (she wasn't going to force them) because she wanted it to be their decision so they could get the most out of the experience.  When everyone started loading into cars she stayed back.  Her mom was getting into panic mode because she did not want her daughter getting back in the car.  I had no idea of any of this going down and I just walked up to her, put my arm around her and told her that the van containing a lot of the mia maids had room for her and she should go get in.  At that point she said goodbye to her mom and ran over to the car.  The mom asked me if I had known what was going on that morning because that was a defining moment for her daughter.  Nope.  I didn't even get one of those feelings like I should do something.  I just saw her standing there and wanted to make sure she got into a car.  No thought process involved at all.  I hadn't even remembered the encounter until her mom brought it up because it was a nonevent for me.  

What a gift that mom gave me.  Just because you fail at one moment or an entire day doesn't mean you're not capable of succeeding in the next.  We need to remember that our nonevents are someone else's major events and visa versa. You'll drive yourself mad if you start over analyzing everything. We just have to try to be our best and live worthy to receive the promptings to bless the lives of those around us, even when we don't know we are being prompted.  Heavenly Father is very forgiving of our mistakes and still has the confidence to continue to use us to bless others, even one moment after a failure.