I have fallen five times in my life as an adult.

I can recite the place and year.

Actual hard physical falls.

Once I slipped and hit pavement really hard….
it requires several stitches over my left eye.

Stitches are something my body has had great experience with.

Another time I was pulling a vine out of the ground, it was not cooperative, so I used my legs and hips.

When the vine broke, I fell backwards off of the four foot waterfall in my backyard and fell onto the rocks and boulders in the creek below.

When I landed on my back I rested between two jagged and protruding boulders which could have broken or cracked important places in my spine.

I was between those jagged edges.

I lay there looking at each boulder,
realizing I felt no pain but was in awe that I landed where I did, having fallen blindly.

These falls were not laying down in green pastures.

They were full body hard falls.

But I was not injured with any long-lasting severity from any of them.

I have fallen spiritually more times than are described above …. and have been protected in seemingly greater ways than I was when I fell physically.

Gravity has pulled me to the Earth when I have physically lost my balance.

Bad decisions,
and the gravity of the weight which accompanies them,
have thrown me off of the proper path already laid out for me and dropped me to my knees and my face more times than I can count.

The shame of these falls and failings,
like the time I lay on my back in the creek between the boulders…                                  were terrifying and frightful…
but because of The Light that is a “lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path”…….

I have been kept from long-lasting and severe harm.

Just as the stitches,
of which I have had many,
heal my skin and leave only a small mark, if any trace at all…..
The Word which was spoken and written long ago constantly heals my heart and has redeemed the life I am blest to live.