On a walk recently, one twin ran home with a bloody knee.
Yes, I said ran.
I’m forever impressed by the resiliency of little kids. The ability to get up and keep going at full speed despite a big bleeding scrape on their knee is incredible. If I were him, I might still be on that sidewalk complaining to the crack about how it inconvenienced me and caused me pain. I might even go further to complain to the soil that it just had to be so soft in our area that our sidewalks were not level! Then, I imagine I would have hobbled home grumbling that the blood was gonna stain my socks if I moved any faster than a snail.
In contrast, my son totally bit it on the sidewalk and he only whimpered for a minute. He was running so fast at the time that it took me a little to catch up to him. I arrived at my son’s side and helped him up and told him he’d be just fine as I cringed internally at the 2-inch bloody scrape on his knee. “Only a little further home,” I said.
He started walking next to me sniffling a little. And then, I heard him say “Mommy, should we go back later and put a big sign on the crack so we can warn others it’s there? Should daddy come back with us to fix it so no one else falls?” And then he moved onto “I like running so much but I DON’T like falling…” Me either kid. But I told him “I can’t say you won’t fall again and, no, we can’t fix every crack you’ll come across. But please don’t stop running. Just know if you fall you will be able get back up and keep going eventually, sometimes with bandaids.”
He looked at me for a second and then at the blood pooling on his knee and unexpectedly took off running the rest of the way home.
God, can I have just a little of his five year old resilience?
This morning my prayer is that we are graced with the strength to get back up and keep moving each and every time we fall. God help us remember that bumps and scrapes along the road are only temporary, and often they provide us with lessons we never knew we needed.
We are feeling a bit scraped up right now, God. Infuse us with a little of the resilience of a five year old so we can dust ourselves off and get back on the road.
