Recently I heard a wise man say that, “success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

 Part of me wants to fall over laughing when I think of the boxes and bags and tons and vaults of enthusiasm I’ve lost and had to regain over my lifetime! {The other part of me wants to cry at the time I’ve killed in that process, not to mention living through the undesirable negative emotions that go with it. Can you relate at all?}

I was thinking of this today when I started a small project of shortening a pair of lace curtains. First, I folded the extra fabric to get the length I needed and then didn’t multiply the amount by two to count for the fold! So I went through the whole process only to get the panels hung and see that they were still too long.

I didn’t pin the casing to the loosest part of the lace and ended up having to cut the casing off again since the lace stretched and made them uneven.

I ran out of bobbin thread. When I took them down the second time, I cut the casing off and cut off the extra inches of the first panel, and then on the second panel I only cut off the casing…not realizing it….and sewed the casing back on. Yes– it was shocking to hang them and see that one was seven inches longer than the other! What?! Oh! I had to retrace my steps to see how that possibly could have happened.

It was a small job. It should have taken about 15 minutes. It took over an hour. {Did I mention I had a headache and really wanted to just take a nap and forget about the curtains?}

I have to say that they look lovely now. But I was sorely tempted to lose enthusiasm! Ha!

I hope you’re fighting the good fight today. I hope you’re giving yourself a lot of room for growth. I hope you are laughing and finding a little  more patience when you fall short of where you want to be, right now.

We’re all rising and falling and rising again. But little bits of success here and there add up over time to major change and improvement. And a worthy baby-step-goal is to little by little, strengthen our ability to maintain optimism and humor, even when the curtains are seven inches shy of even! Failure doesn’t mean we’ve lost, it means we’re on our way to learning. Especially if we can keep our enthusiasm alive and well.

Love to you Sister!

Jacque