Lessons of the Fall

Part one: Fall

The first fall evening of September suffered a hard fall.

Earlier my beloved hubby informed me Jacksonville traffic delayed he and his recently employed colleague’s trip home. After dinner the boredom of delay tugged at me. I drifted to the master bedroom TV, tucked behind the upper doors of a Thomasville full oak armoire.

Funny I hadn’t watched movies on television for months.

Holding the remote the urge for a thrill beckoned. I clicked the Stone Age CRT TV to an artsy movie channel spewing cinematic belch on the drunken angst of a school reunion, surely repulsive to Him who eternally loved me.  Yet it flickers drew my eyes and body too close. I raised my right hand like a fool to lean on the cabinet doors.

How easily 300 pounds of mass can tip to a flat, hard fall.

I found myself backed against the ottoman in front of the bed, bruised arms perpendicular to the ground, hands gripped to the edge of the armoire as blood oozed from a finger. Screams to God, screams to my kids seemed too long for the seconds it took for my Maria to get to me with Buddy behind her. Bookending the cabinet they only needed to lift it an inch to pry my twisted left foot from total crush.

Thirty minutes south MBH got the call from his wife, clearly in shock. When he and his new colleague, Dr. L entered the room, she felt shame over her elephantine shin and foot plus the mess of books, clothes, and unbroken vase (once atop the cabinet) flung about the shag carpet.

“Shouldn’t you go home to see your wife, sir?”  I had to ask. She still lived two hours north of us. That very day I was told she suffered bumps from air bags deployed in her now totaled, month-old minivan.

Dr. L lingered to quickly upright the armoire with the dead weight TV. But no doctor could easily erase the consequences of this hard fall, the contusions, the small ankle fracture, impaired mobility, costly bills, and hard guilt.

It’s hard to receive the care, calls, flowers friends and family extended to me these weeks since my stupidity. I can barely fathom God’s care, as He knows the ugly details of my stupidity.

Between the floor and the hard fall I could have been. . . . But between the floor and any hard fall, Jesus is.

By His wounds, by His wounds we are healed.

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*Who we experienced live at church, the Jesus Painter.