One of the main rules of performing, whether it’s singing or acting or dancing or playing an instrument, is to keep going if you make a mistake. Pretend it didn’t happen.

Miss a chord? Move on to the next one. Forget a line? Make one up. Sing a wrong note? Keep it in the chord. Fall during a routine? Get back up gracefully. The point is not to make a big deal of the screw up and carry on with the performance.

I’m great at faking my way through a mistake. Back when I used to sing, I was awful about remembering lyrics. If I messed up, I’d try to recover quickly all while pasting a big ol’ smile on my face. I might beat myself inside, calling myself a long list of names that included “loser” and “screw-up,” but the audience would never know it.

We’re all pretty good at smiling our ways through screw ups and moving on, aren’t we?

Except sometimes we have to stop and face it.

I took my daughter and her friends to their school talent show a few nights ago. A precious, little girl was in the middle of her baton routine, and went completely blank. Her face suddenly filled with panic, and she couldn’t recover. She turned her back to the audience and cried. Everyone cheered her on, but she couldn’t pick up where she left off, and she was too much of a wreck to start over. She hurried off stage, and the next performer took her spot and carried on with the show. However, the twirler wasn’t giving up. She’d had a temporary setback, but she came back to the stage with her batons and completed her routine with beautiful execution.

Sooner or later, we all make mistakes or bad choices or stupid decisions. Sometimes they’re noticeable; sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they wreak havoc on our self esteem. Sometimes we need to take time out to regroup.

What matters most is what we do afterwards.

Do we keep going? Do we beat ourselves up? Do we turn and hide our faces? Do we grieve? Do we forget who we are and what we were meant to do?

Or, more importantly, do we admit our mistakes and failures and keep showing up for another shot?

* * * * *

There’s another perspective to consider in all this talk of mistakes and comebacks and moving on. It’s the perspective of the people sitting in the audience, the ones who haven’t risked a performance, the ones who haven’t had the opportunity to make a mistake.

Will they boo the performer off stage, or will they encourage another chance?

Picture that little girl twirling her baton, forgetting her routine. Imagine for a moment that the audience snickered and gossiped, then booed her off the stage. What if they denied her the opportunity to come back to the stage and start over? What if they told her that she wasn’t good enough and that she blew her one shot? What if they said she messed up her routine so badly that it was forever marred in their minds and there was no need to try to fix it?

I suppose, if you have the least bit of empathy, you’d be appalled at the above scenario. Yet this is what happens every time we deny grace to another person. This is the scenario that’s too often played out in homes and in churches and in friendships and in the workplace.

Maybe this is the world we live in:

Get it right the first time, or get out. Measure up to a standard of perfection, or you’re a failure. Perform, perform, perform like a hamster on a wheel until you can’t take the pressure, and exhaustion overwhelms you so that you trip over your own feet, then turn your back to the world while you weep.

But that’s not the kind of person I want to be. I don’t want to put the expectation of perfection out into the world. I want to be the one who says, Do your best. And when you mess up (because we all do), come back and try again. I want to see you turn your mess into a masterpiece.

 * * * * *

We all have our turns being the performer and the audience. Which kind will you be?

I hope I’m the kind of performer that’s brave enough to keep showing up to risk making mistakes.

And I hope I’m the kind of audience that’s forgiving enough to offer grace and second chances.