Took a Tumble

June 21, 2008

I took a tumble off my patio this morning. Wasn’t paying attention to a common law of physics. I was weeding, which would not be remarkable, except that the weeds were by the patio and I was standing about seven inches above them. You gotta understand – because I don’t have any quadriceps, I can’t bend my knees very much, let alone squat. In fact, to stand I have to hyper-extend my knees some so my legs won’t collapse. No quads also means I can’t get up from the ground without crawling up on something. Now you get the picture…

I was standing on the patio, bending at the waist pulling weeds seven inches lower than my feet. One can’t mess with center-of-gravity laws without consequences. Yep. Over I went, a face plant. After doing a mental checklist and finding nothing was hurt, I rolled over, sat up and decided those varmints would be a whole lot easier to pull from ground level, where I was now. When I was done, I put my crutches where I could grab them when I was ready to, crawled up on the patio and used it for leverage to get my legs under me and stand up again.

Metaphorically I’ve done that lots of times. You, too, I’d guess. We do something dumb, like maybe ignore one of God’s laws? and take a tumble. I have found it pays to assess the damage, redeem the experience, file it away in my mental “warning” file, get up and go again. But that’s always with the Lord’s help. He’s the solid thing I crawl up on to stand again. I know it is fashionable these days to “believe in yourself” and do things your way. Yeah, and end up with your face in the dirt and no way up. Like a bent over bruised reed. I prefer to rely on the Solid and Strong One.

I wrote a story that talks about all this, “Bruised Reeds“, about a simple tribal teenager with a big heartache. Check it out! What do you think? Send me a comment.