Recently, I entered a writing contest and didn’t win.

I didn’t even place actually.

Last week when I opened the thanks for entering… email my first feeling was surprise.

(I really thought I had a chance) and then, shame.

I thought of all the people I had to tell and I started to feel sick.

I began to wish I had never entered the contest at all.

Searching my mind’s pockets for hope scribbled out and folded up

I heard the woman at my meeting tell me,

When I go through something that I don’t like or understand, I ask God,

what do you want me to learn here?

 I heard Charlie from church say, Never waste a crisis.

And I heard myself reading Abraham Lincoln’s biography out loud to David in the dim light.

He lost eight elections, twice failed in business and had a nervous breakdown…

Maybe God wants me to learn how to fail.

Because failure, not success, is what truly connects us.

It humbles, and aches and fills us with need.

Failure is just pain covered in proof that we are taking risks.

Proof that we are growing.

And proof that we’ve got a long way to go.

Here’s my failing essay, it’s a true story and I hope you like it better than the judges did…

You. Can. Write.

By: Katie Swift

A few weeks ago I’m lying in bed.

Thoughts are circling above me, looking for someplace to land.

Looking for pen and paper but it’s late and it’s dark and I don’t want to wake the husband.

So I pull the covers up to my chin and write run on sentences in my mind.

Words march along to a clumsy rhythm, starting, stopping, bumping into each other

as they go and I follow them there into the meandering pulse, the dance of dreamers.

The next morning I wake up and resolve to write.

But first I think I need to learn how.

I check the library to see if they have a writing group and stumble on an Erma Bombeck contest instead.

I think, if anyone can teach me to write, it’s Erma.

I found Erma a few years ago, when the kids were still in diapers.

When I was all guilt and disillusionment for not loving every minute of

my peanut butter and jelly smudged days.

When motherhood was a job I couldn’t quit.

I felt trapped and Erma’s words were my escape.

She encouraged me, “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”

She warned me, “Never have more children than you have car windows.”

She inspired me, “Housework, if you do it right, it will kill you.”

God gave me Erma like a friend gives me a call.

With Erma, I was not alone.

So when I see the contest I feel like it’s a God thing

(or maybe an Erma thing).

Like maybe they are telling me I should enter.

I watch a video of Erma sharing about the English professor who told her three words that changed her life.

You. Can. Write.

So I go to work and write a story about my father

but it’s not funny. It’s not Erma.

I begin to doubt.

I’m not a writer. I’m just a bored house-wife without a job.

I’m an artist wannabe and nobody cares about my life.

The next morning I start searching for a career.

I map out a plan: finish my degree, get some heels, a real profession with a boss and a salary.

The mail comes.

I open a Christmas card from old friends with a personal note inside:

“Thanks for sharing your wonderful photo and family story.

Katie- you have a talent for writing,

if you pursue it you could be the modern day Erma Bombeck.”

Thoughts are circling above me, looking for someplace to land.

You. Can. Write.

Its all Erma needed.

Maybe it’s all I need too.