Falling hurts, but you CAN do hard things

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Spending my days at home with a newborn and now active baby has daily reminded me, “you can do hard things.”

Little man practices standing for the thousandth time that day and flops down onto the carpet to reach a block that he flung off the coffee table. He grins cheekily at me.

“You did such a great job falling, honey!”

You can live intentionally with passion and purpose as God’s beloved – even when you fail.

Let’s Talk About Failure…

Do I want my son to learn how to be a failure? Heck no. But I do want to encourage him to accept that falling (literally or metaphorically) is a big part of life. It’s often part of the learning process.

Since learning that we’d be having a child, and all the more since our NICU experience, I’ve been praying for guidance to create an environment that fosters resilience.

Part of my pregnancy with little man was spent on modified bed rest (i.e. lazy Sunday afternoon activity) and then full-on bed-rest (woohoo!). I went from enthusiastically working out on the regular to being told to “take it easy” – not an easy feat for a high-energy gal. After giving birth prematurely and beginning the NICU journey, I was eager (and desperate) to get active again. I yearned for a healthy physical outlet to work through the countless emotions tied into becoming a mother, experiencing a high-risk pregnancy, navigating the new NICU normal, and forgiving my body.

Along the way, I found Momma Strong, a phenomenal fitness program engineered to teach you about your body and how to gain strength from the inside out. It’s about functional fitness and acknowledging that motherhood is an action sport. The program has been SO good for my body, my heart and my mindset. I’ll happily gush about it another time, but for now, I just wanted to give some context.

You Can Do Hard Things

One of the many jewels that Momma Strong routinely hits on is that “You can do hard things.”

It’s true. You can, and let’s face it, you have to because it’s part of life. I find myself telling myself and little man this over and over again when we’re going through hard things.

Resilience – the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

I just checked my library’s online catalog to see what books they had on resilience. Yes, I could also google this, but holy moly, the Internet can be overwhelming. A whopping 238 titles came up related to this topic. A quick search on ted.com revealed 101 talks.

These quick searches highlight that resilience matters… and so many of us don’t know how to foster it. But – we know it when we see it.

One Snapshot: Captain Marvel

As on example, we saw it in Captain Marvel, when Carol Danvers is facing off her nemesis and remembers the many times she fell – and got up again.

Carol Denvers Getting Back Up | Captain Marvel | "I'm only human"

It’s such a simple thing, isn’t it? Standing up again when you fall down. When I watch my son learn the basics of standing up again and again and again, I’m reminded that it’s harder than it looks. This takes persistence, stubbornness, courage, a willingness to fail… resilience.

Little man is literally learning the baby steps of standing up again after he falls. And he’s does it with gusto! He’s a living metaphor of not letting temporary setbacks get you down (quite literally) – and finding joy along the way.

Finding the Joy

James 1:2-4 (NIV) Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Oh boy, don’t we all need to be reminded of this? In both the “small” and “big” trials?

• Stubbing your toe (or whack your foot on the baby fence for the twentieth time).
• Someone cuts you off on the road.
• Your car breaks down.
• You get heartbreaking news about a loved one. Y
• You’re facing relationship conflict.
• You’re in physical pain and don’t know why.
• And so much more.

So many hurts. So hard to find joy.

I can’t pretend to have an easy how-to for this. I do know that looking to God for this joy is the ultimate answer. We also have so many living metaphors around us that are walking (or standing) to remind us of how to choose joy when we’re facing trials of many kinds.

Little man lifts up onto his knees, flings his arms in the air, lunges for the block and triumphantly grabs it to cram it into his mouth for another taste test. He notices the coffee table ledge, drops the block and pulls up to standing again, looks back at me and grins. Let the fun continue.

You can live intentionally with passion and purpose as God’s beloved.