I was a huge choir nerd growing up. From the time I was old enough to enroll to the day I graduated, I spent every school day in the choir room rehearsing for the next big performance. I loved pushing my skills to the next level and making music with my friends. When I look back on my formative years, choir is one of the parts I remember most fondly.

One of my assistant directors had a catch phrase that I’ll never forget. He used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect! Perfect practice makes perfect.” And while that was a helpful way to keep us on our toes in choir rehearsal, I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to figure out how to turn imperfect practice into something better.

The truth is that a good deal of life in the real world is failure. Or if not failure, it’s at least only partial success—a check mark with an asterisk next to it. For every thing I get right, I can recall at least a dozen that I goofed up along the way.

Mistakes seem to be the world’s primary method of education.

This week, I’ll celebrate my third anniversary at the church. Three years on the job. And that means I’m entering my fourth holiday season as a full-time pastor.

Between special services, programs, and events, this time of year can become quite hectic. The calendar is chock full, and the requests don’t stop coming. My first few years, I struggled just to keep up. It’s not that I had poor time management or work ethic; I just wasn’t prepared for everything that would be on my plate.

This year, though, I’m going in with a plan. I’m trying to stay ahead of things. Work more efficiently. Avoid the mistakes I made last year that cost me time and mental energy. And the funny thing is that it’s working.

I’m feeling more on top of things this year than in the past, which means I’m more pleasant and have more attention to give to my family as we celebrate the holidays. I don’t feel like I’m drowning or even treading water. Instead, I think I’m handling all of my responsibilities well and contributing to the projects that I’m working on. It’s a really good feeling.

I hope this doesn’t come off as bragging. I’m not telling you all of this to pat myself on the back. In all honesty, it probably shouldn’t have taken me so long to get to this point. But here I am.

The point is that practice can make perfect, but only if we choose to learn from it. Even our mistakes can be beneficial if we don’t plow past them but instead reflect on them and allow them to inform our decisions going forward. The only way to get better at something is to work at it, and that’s going to require us to be comfortable with a certain amount of failure.

What is it you want to improve at? Are you willing to work at it? Even more than that, are you willing to fail, to face that failure, and to learn from it? Because that’s what it takes.

When we say, “Practice makes perfect,” we gloss over the fact that practice stinks. Sure, the end result is nice, but the in-between? Not so much. We don’t like to fail. But learning from our mistakes is the only way we’re going to get better.

I’m really happy that, at least in my work situation, I’m getting to a point where I’ve made enough mistakes to really learn something. That’s not to say I won’t make more; I will. But when I do, I’m going to learn from them, too, and use them as tools for improvement. And in doing so, I’ll continue to grow and get better.

If you’re in the in-between and feel like you’re failing right now, don’t give up hope. That just means you’re on your way to something worthwhile. And once you get there, you’ll be glad you stumbled through.

Practice makes perfect, and perfect is worth the work it takes to get there.

That’s where I’m at right now, friends. I hope you find it useful. I appreciate you for reading, and I’ll see you back here very soon!