Falling Down

Falling down.  I'm pretty good at it.  I fell out the back door when I was pregnant with my first son.  I fell while carrying my second son, as an infant, going up the steps to church.  My third son was safe...no falls.  I don't even want to mention all the falling that was involved when I was learning to ride a bike.   I fell off a ladder when I was painting at home and had to lay there until someone came home. 

I stopped one day to get some pictures of the lake on my way home from Princeton.  It was a beautiful, sun shiny day.  I got my new camera out, got out of the car to get a good angle.  While I was concentrating on getting a good shot, I forgot to watch where I was going, or I would have seen that big hole before I stepped in it.  That was a broken foot fall.

I fell down the front steps while my puppies ran around like lunatics.  I fell over the flower border when my puppies were dogs, but they were still lunatics.

My latest fall was just the other day.  I was casually walking out the boardwalk in front of our wood shed.  I wasn't hurrying, just strolling, but unbeknown to me, the lunatic dogs run on that walk every day, thus coating it with a thin film of mud.  I'm not sure what really happened, but I think there was a back flip involved and I ended in a split, then pitched forward by momentum onto both my knees.  My thoughts as I was falling was wondering if my lunatic dogs were now grown up enough to be like Lassie.  Would they go running for help and bark incessantly until someone would understand that an old woman was laying somewhere with her legs twisted on backwards?  Would they go get a rope and pull me to safety?

Well, no.  They ran in circles, barking and then ran around the house.  They are still lunatics.  I finally was able to put all my parts back where they were supposed to be and walked in the house, covered in mud, sat down and watched the dogs out the window run around like....well, like lunatics.

Like I said, I'm pretty good at this falling down stuff.  I've made an art out of it.  But everytime I've fallen, I've gotten up.  That's the point.  Anyone can fall, the hard part is getting up.

I've been knocked down alot in my life.  Parents divorced...got up.  Husband lost his job...got up.  Financial hardships...got up.  Betrayed and hurt by friends and family...got up.  Lost a beautiful daughter...got up.

So, it's not how many times you've been knocked down, it's how many times you get up. 

2 Corinthians 4:17  For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory