Falling for God

Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent

As often as I have said, “My foot has slipped,”
your love, O Lord, upheld me.
Psalm 94:18

As my foot slips off the curb, I experience a split-second of awareness that I am not going to regain my balance. Then I am on my knees in the street, everything I was carrying strewn before me. I pick myself up and am grateful that none of my neighbors seems to have witnessed my embarrassment. I brush off the dirt, surprised I have not ripped a hole in my pants leg. But other than a skinned knee and bruised pride, I am fine.

I regather my belongings and my composure and wonder why it is so hard to fall. Or rather, it is easy to fall but it is difficult to feel OK about it. Is it that skinned knees belong to adventuresome young girls and not middle aged professional women? That as an adult, falling represents failure rather than learning? Or is it simply that I do not want to know that I can be overcome by a curb?

Somehow, falling is all about being human. Sometimes I fall hard and sometimes I fall soft, but not falling does not seem to be an option. Falling can make me feel diminished. But in the eyes of God I am not less. Falling, failing, being overcome do not make me unlovable. Rather these moments of unlooked-for vulnerability expose me to God’s unfailing help.  And such exposure leads to succor and healing and life.

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