Get back up

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again. Proverbs 24:16

 

Tyler and I have been reading through Boyhood and Beyond by Bob Schultz.  We have only been reading a chapter every other day so that we can discuss each chapter and he can have time to think it over.  It is an amazing book for boys that are headed toward manhood.

Today's chapter was about making mistakes and what we do after we make them.  The author used a story about football to illustrate his point.  Tyler was of course immediately interested as he is with anything that remotely talks about football.  The story was about a runner that wanted to quit after the first time he was tackled.  Tyler was amused by this because he knows that a running back  would expect to be tackled and wouldn't let that end his desire to play football and keep running.

 

We talked about some of the mistakes in life that we make that can cause us to fall down.   As we talked about some things in his life that make him fall down I thought of many in my own.  We had a great discussion about times when he or other people he knows have fallen down and what their response has been.

This wonderful chapter discussed some of the responses everyone has when they fall down.  Some people just stay down.  This has happened to me before especially when our kids were first diagnosed with autism.  The longer you stay down unfortunately the harder it is to get back up.    Some people like to just pretend they never fell.  This usually results in things getting much worse because we have done nothing to fix the cause of our fall so we will likely just fall again.  Some people get angry that they fell and so they lay where they fell and dwell on their anger.  Others will make excuses for their fall or blame others which will likely not only hurt themselves but their relationships as well.

The only good response to a fall is to get back up.  It is best to get up quickly and try to fix that which made us fall in the first place.  We also need to fix any damage we may have caused during our fall.

The great thing about falling and getting back up is that God knows we are going to fall and he knows how to help us recover from our falls too.  He is waiting to help pull us up when we do fall.  Tyler and I both found a lot of encouragement in that.  

The other important thing we talked about falling was that when we fall we have an opportunity to learn.  A foolish man continues to stumble because he fails to see what caused him to fall before.  This is a true sign of a person journeying into a godly adult life.   I want him to know that it is okay to make mistakes and to use them to learn how to either steer clear of a potential danger in the future or how to navigate through it.

I love the discussions this book has brought about between us.  It thrills me that he is starting to understand what it takes to be a godly man and that he desires to be one.  Thank you Bob Schultz!  I think we will both have fond memories of reading this book.

"Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise..." Micah 7:8