Hurts, doesn’t it… when you stumble? Stumbling doesn’t always mean falling but it does mean coming very, very close to falling. Stumbling can be a warning. Do we heed it? And when I’m talking about stumbling I’m not just taking about physical falling – we can stumble emotionally, spiritually and even intellectually. For some, a stumble will stop them completely. No further movement will occur. But, stumbling can be a check for us – a time to decide how/if to proceed.
The ‘almost’ fall does take one’s breath away. A kind of… “there, but the grace of God go I” reality. Whether you catch yourself or someone comes along and does the catching, the feeling of escape from what could be a bad situation is somewhat euphoric. Actually, we can use the information from a stumble far more effectively then we can from a fall. A fall entails taking care of any injuries that may have occurred before looking at the reason(s) for the fall.
How we react to ‘stumbles’ says a great deal about who we are.Though it should be warning enough, it oft times isn’t. I sometimes think that there is a bit of a war in us – pushing the outer limits to see exactly how far we can go without total destruction occuring. For some, a stumble will cause them to stop completely. For others, a stumble will cause a reassessment of what they are doing and how they should proceed. Some people actually ignore stumbling and thus don’t take advantage of the positive potential.
Stumbles occur in our lives no matter how much we plan for all eventualities. The unplanned for ones tend to have a more lasting impact. An argument can also be made that the ‘type’ (the area – emotional, spiritual, intellectual) makes the major difference in how/if we proceed. Some of the stumbles don’t have the impact other types do. Perhaps. I still maintain that how we react to stumbles is the major determinant in our own character development and how we react to stumbles.
