1. I remembered the words of my lecturer Prof. EJC Nwanna out of the blues today. Some of my classmates failed exams and were dejected. Prof laughed in that his throaty manner and said something that stayed with me ever since.

2. "We will all fail at something at one time or the other. Be it an exam or even in our relationships. Because failure is a normal part of life. But my dear, there are some types of failures that when you fail at it, it creates a festering wound. Failure at parenting?

3. Then that is a major failure. As for your exams, if you fail...you try again! But you may never get the chance to right the wrong if you fail at something important like parenting." And with that, their moods appeared to improve.

My father also used to say,

4. "It is when everything has been going seamlessly all the time that you should even be more prayerful. Because if you've never failed at anything before, you may be ill-prepared to handle it when you're faced with it. And it is not a question of if, it is when.

5. Because we will all experience failure at one time or the other in different ways."

May we not fail in situations that we may never recover from. Amen.