Book Review: Growth Spurts and Growing Pains by Gordon Douglas

I feel the need to start this review with a confession. The author of this book is a good friend of mine. Maybe that colored my review, but I doubt it. This book is gold! Gordon Douglas is a stand up comic, a minister and more and this book shares not just his journey, but the things he learned along the way and things he wishes he knew. Here is a man who has raised at 19 kids, traveled the world doing what he loves, but it’s not all glamour. He shares so many life lessons in this book that it is hard to categorize. Is it a memoir? Yes! Is it a self-help book? Also yes and it is much more. Growth Spurts and Growing Pains by Gordon Douglas is hilarious in one moment and tear-jerkingly tender and touching in the next. Gordon is a man I’ve known for a long time, but I know him a lot better now, but that’s not the best part. This book has helped me to learn more about me, not to mention the God I serve. This book is brilliant, check it out.

What Would You Do If You Could Not Fail?

A Facebook friend posted the above question the other day. Needless to say, I have heard it before many times and every time I see it, it takes me to things I could do with my gifts and talents. If I could not fail I would live my dreams. This time as I contemplated, I started to realize my response to that question is somewhat narcissistic. The ability not to fail is a huge amount of power, and my first thoughts were how to use it to do what I want. In truth I wan’t being a narcissist, I was simply looking at my gifts and my abilities what I have to offer, meager though they may be. Most of the changes that I feel I should be making with that level of power are not in my wheelhouse. Curing cancer, or some other dread disease, ending poverty or homelessness, and this presented a whole new problem. What important thing would get left out as I try to figure out how to use this superpower otherwise known as the inability to fail?

Another through occurred to me. I could just make a big blanket statement. I would solve all the world’s problems, but still there is a problem, in that some of the things some people see as a problem, others may not see as a problem at all. Even in trying to be benevolent, I could create more problems. This question is even more complex than it looks and I think that’s because it’s the wrong question. The inability to fail is the stuff of God. Indeed God is the only One who cannot fail. Only He knows the right thing to do every time and at just the right time. The rest of us would just make a bigger mess. So let’s leave infallibility to God and look at this a different way.

None of us is immune to failure, especially if we are trying something new. What if instead of asking what would you do if you could not fail, you asked another question? Are you ready?

What would you be willing to fail at over and over again until you succeeded?

See now we have some skin in the game. Now it’s not that everything is easy and you can’t fail. Now you’re going to invest your blood, sweat and tears in accomplishing your dream or your mission. You’re going to do the work. You’re going to find the thing is most important to you and you’re going to go down into the trenches and slog it out til you win, and if you don’t get everything accomplished that you want to accomplish you will have at least paved the way for the next dreamer to pick up where you left off.

What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? When it is all said and done, I figured out what that would be. I realized that solving all the world’s problems was daunting, but I do know the thing that would go a long way toward that. I know the thing that is needed most in our world. If I knew I could not fail, I would evangelize the whole world for Jesus, but here’s the truth. I can fail, and I have and I will.

Here’s to keeping on trying one soul at a time. Anybody want to join me?