I have tried to focus on helping my leaders grow in faith, prayer and responsibility. But I’ve slowly begun to realize that if I keep catching them before they fall, it’s never going to happen. If I want them to succeed, I need to let them fail.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is also why God allows us to stumble.

It must pain God to see any  of His children continually make mistakes. We have all suffered heartache and failure and we may look up to heaven and yell at God, wondering where in the world He was when we tripped and fell face first into the pavement. There have been times where I let my prayer life slip into half-hearted wish lists, losing the motivation to put God first. And He let me make that choice.

We depend on ourselves too much. We have a hard enough time swallowing our pride and asking other people for help, let alone God. And if we were to reflect on that fact more often, we would be repulsed by how often we have said no to Christ.

I believe that in certain circumstances, God will let things happen so that we learn lessons from them.

But on a bigger scale, what is the one lesson we are supposed to be learning from our failures? I see it clearly: To depend on God and God alone.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The time of the Christian is that of the risen Christ who is with us always, no matter what tempests may arise.” God is constantly trying to teach us that only through our tempests — the violent windstorms — can we see the risen Lord. Does that sound painful? Yes? Well, that’s because it is. He lets us fall, so that we may be crucified with Christ and then rise with Him in glory.

In coming to an understanding of this and then actually letting my youth leaders stumble, they become better leaders. In letting us stumble, God makes us better Catholics, enabling us to rely on Him more, to pray more, to love more. And when we see Him face to face, He will be able to say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

So the next time we realize that the answer we gave on that test was wrong or wear a t-shirt and shorts when we should have worn a parka, maybe we shouldn’t raise our fists at God.

Maybe He’s not doing it to be mean. Maybe we all just have a lot to learn.

(Keong, 21, is an English literature major at the University of British Columbia.)