What happens when you fall down?
It’s been awhile since we packed up the kids bikes and took them to the neighborhood trail. This Saturday, however, the weather was beautiful. Two out of my three boys were eager to get out and enjoy it. So, I packed their bikes in the back of the car and we went to the trail.
At first, they were super careful pedaling down the concrete path. They’d go slowly and then pump their brakes to stop and see if I noticed how well they were doing. They also wanted to experiment with all the different ways to stop – the hand brake, the foot brake, and the actual feet on the ground brake. They experimented stopping and starting for a full half mile.
Then, they finally decided to see how fast they could go… right before a downhill slope in the trail. So they peddled fast and the trail pushed them ahead even faster. One rode the wave all the way to the bridge, but they other had a moment of hesitation and it landed him in a pile on the side of the path.
He cried for a minute and then got up just as I reached him to show me his scrapes. His whole knee was bloody and the side of his arm was faintly red as well. “Look mom! Bleed!” he said.
What do you do when you fall?
Do you stay down and wallow? Or do you pick yourself up and keep going even if with a slight limp and a faint trail of blood running down your leg.
He got up. He wasn’t quite ready to get back on the bike but he walked up right all the way to the car. He talked himself into and out of and into riding a bike again someday. At one point he even told me that blood is good, it means the scrapes are healing. (Ok…)
I imagined that if I had fallen that hard, I might still be lying there on the side of the road wondering if Uber makes trail calls.
Kids can be very resilient.
So this Monday, let us pray for resilience. May God help us stand up when we fall. May we see our blood, sweat, and tears as elements of healing and growth. May every twist and turn and downward slope of this week build us up so that we may be stronger than we ever thought possible.
