I'd Rather Not Fall

​On Tuesday morning I had to go to the hospital to have some routine labs drawn prior to my annual physical. This is no big deal most of the time, but on Tuesday morning, a thin layer of ice had glazed the cement, making walking somewhat precarious. Wishing not to do damage to my body (or my ego) by falling, I dug out my ice cleats, strapped them on my shoes, and took off for the hospital. 

That’s the thing about falling:  Once we’ve done it a time or two, we tend to take extra precautions to prevent it in the future because we know the cost of an untimely fall. A couple of years ago, I fell on our driveway while shoveling because I didn’t see the sheet of ice under the freshly fallen snow. I landed on what I now refer to as my “bad knee,” and cut the skin of my joint clean open. And that’s mild compared to other falls so many people in my life have had.

This is why, I think, so many of us walk around like penguins in the wintertime–shuffling and waddling from our vehicles to our places of employment, the church, or back home at the end of the day. We would rather risk looking somewhat ridiculous than we would run the risk of falling and hurting ourselves and/or someone else near us. The only problem is, we don’t necessarily leave this approach to falling on the ice. 

It doesn’t take many years of living before each of us learns for ourselves what it feels like to fall:  To fall in love, to fall out of love, to fall short, to fall apart, to fall from that pedestal our families have put us on, to fall from grace, to fall back, to fall in, or to fall behind. And after we fall a few times, we figure out that it doesn’t feel great to fall. In fact, we figure out that it doesn’t feel great to be in a place where there is even a risk of falling. 

And so we start shuffling and waddling through our lives–metaphorically wrapping ourselves in bubble wrap–convinced that with the right amount of protection, and the right amount of restraint, and the right amount of abstinence from risk, we will keep ourselves from falling. And if we can keep ourselves from falling–in all the ways that falling can and does happen–then we won’t get hurt. 

But the truth is that–in avoiding risk and avoiding the fall–we avoid some pretty great stuff too. We avoid the thrill that comes from falling in love. We avoid knowing what it’s like to have our friends catch us when we fall back or fall in or fall apart. We avoid the lessons that bring us to a place of deep knowing, like the truth that there is nowhere we can fall that grace cannot find us. Sure, we’d rather not fall, but what if falling is just part of living?

I think sometimes we look at falling like it is somehow outside of the human experience…but what if it isn’t? What if falling is fully a part of what it means to be human? What if keeping ourselves from falling was never the point? What if the point is that life is risky and love is risky and we live and love anyway, knowing that when (not if) we fall it will likely hurt like hell, but the hurt will not have the final word. The hurt will not break us beyond repair…even if we walk with a limp for a while.

I’m not sure how you answer those questions, but for me, the answer is that I would rather fall a million times in a million ways than to be walking around in bubble wrap all of the time–never risking, never trying and failing or trying and succeeding, never knowing the terrible and wonderful feeling that comes in the free fall just before hitting the ground. I would rather know beyond a reasonable doubt that I am not simply waddling and shuffling and calling it a life. How about you?

Slipping, tripping, and falling my way toward being more fully human with you,
Pr. Melissa 

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