I don’t want to be a fall risk. I am still too young for that label. Yet, I seem to be working towards earning the title nonetheless. To be clear, I don’t fall all the time, but I have fallen too much for my liking in the past few years.

My first really bad fall was about 5 years ago, and that one was a doozie! It was completely unexpected, as most falls are. It was a total face plant on concrete that landed me in the ER. It was traumatic for the whole family, as we were on vacation together at the beach and were just returning to our condo from ice cream to settle in for the night and watch a movie together. Instead, I tripped on a curb, kissed the pavement hard, and we spent the next few hours at the hospital. Then I spent the rest of the vacation on the couch with a concussion and severe bruising on my face. It was not what we had planned for our time away, but that’s what we got with a very unexpected fall.

It was a few years until my next fall, which was far less traumatic, but still no fun. This one took place while I was walking through a construction site for my brother’s new home and tripped on the uneven terrain, falling onto the concrete slab for the garage. I got the wind knocked out of me and still have a scar on my knee from that one, but all in all, it was not too bad. It was just my husband and I there at the time, and it didn’t require a doctor visit. So not too bad.

The following summer, however, the fall out of a mini-van was a bit worse. It was definitely a sloppy dismount. I was simply stepping out of the mini-van, not realizing that my foot had gotten caught in the strap of a travel bag until I was falling down out of the van, rather than stepping out as I had planned. That fall got my other knee, and it was pretty bad for a time. The worst part was that I was on my way to the airport when that happened, so I had to navigate the airport and flying home with a very swollen knee that I could not walk on. My knee took quite a while to heal from the fall and gave me a matching scar on both knees, but I recovered and was doing okay, until earlier this week when I experienced my fourth and most recent fall, which is possibly the worst of them, or at least a rival to the first one.

Clearly I thought I needed to up my fall game to outdo what I have done before, and so I did by adding height to the feat. Unconsciously I must have decided it wasn’t enough just to fall to the ground from my 5’5″ stature to see what damage I could do…nooo, I needed to add another two feet by climbing up on a chair. So now I would fall down from up high, and not only that, but I would fall backward! Yes, that is a real fall!…and it was. Ugh! Obviously, the fall was not intended, but it happened as described, and the outcome was quite a spectacle. I fell from the chair, first hitting my right knee, then falling back on my buttocks, and finally, with the momentum still carrying me backward, I smacked the back of my head on the edge of our wooden kitchen table. It was a 10 out of 10 that resulted in another visit to the ER and a whole lot of pain. Thank God, I didn’t break anything or have any serious damage, but my body is definitely hurt and moving very slowly. I am healing little by little, but I think I will feel the impact of this one for a good long while.

So why I am sharing all this with you? Why would I tell you about some of my most vulnerable moments and fears? I am sharing this with you because it got me thinking. I started by saying that I don’t want to be a fall risk, which is true, in the physical sense. But what I have realized as I have thought about this is that we are all a fall risk–falling into sin, that is–and some of the circumstances of my falls offer good lessons for all of us. The Bible tells us, right from the beginning, in Genesis, that “sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” (4:7) So we must be alert and aware of the pitfalls that can lead us into sin, so we won’t fall.

One of the first things about falls is that we are not expecting them. They catch us by surprise. This can also be true when we fall into sin. We do not always plan to sin, and yet, can find ourselves there unexpectedly. Sometimes, we end up “tripping” into our sin. Maybe we weren’t paying close enough attention to our environment to be aware of the risk, and before we know it, we “fall” into sinful decisions and behavior. So there is no intent, yet we still end up falling and facing the consequences of that fall.

Sometimes a physical fall is caused by walking on uneven ground, and the same is true for a spiritual fall. The Word of God provides a clear, level path for us to follow. When we trust in the Lord and acknowledge Him in all our ways, He will make our path straight. (Prov. 3:5-6). But there are those times we are not trusting in Him and following His ways, so our path is no longer straight–it is bumpy and unstable, and can ultimately lead us to fall. When we are not seeking our way in Him, it is too easy to find ourselves going down the wrong path that leads to sin.

We can also end up falling when we are caught on an obstacle. We might not even be aware of it. We think we are doing okay and just keep moving forward expecting everything to work out just fine. It is not until we take the next step that we realize we are caught and about to be tripped up. But by then, it is too late–we are on the way down already. There are many things in our lives that we can get stuck on that will lead us into sin. So before we take a step, we must carefully examine our motives, our intentions and our hearts, so we don’t fall into sin.

Finally, sometimes we fall just because we were doing something stupid–something we know we shouldn’t be doing–you know, like standing on top of a chair instead of using the perfectly good stepstool nearby…that kind of stupid. We don’t like to admit that one too often, but I know I am not alone in this. There are times in our spiritual walk when we are making bad decisions and we are fully aware of it. We are just too caught up in our own plans and determination to think about the consequences. We convince ourselves that we know better and it will be okay. In these moments, there are at times people around us who see the risk and caution us before we take the step–like my husband who said, “Maybe you shouldn’t try to stand up on that chair…why don’t you use the stepstool?” He tried to stop me, realizing that I could hurt myself, but I didn’t listen. I was sure that I could do it without incident. I had done it before and it worked out okay, so why not this time? So instead of heeding the warning, I pressed on, confident in my own stupid decision…and you know the story, I fell. Isn’t it like that with sin too? We all make some less than wise decisions in this life, rationalizing and justifying our choices and trying to convince others as much as we have convinced ourselves that we will be okay…until we aren’t. We have fallen into sin and are facing the consequences of our wayward thinking.

We all will sin. The Bible makes that clear in I John 1:8, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.” So we cannot avoid it completely. But it can be avoided; the Bible also makes that clear. We are instructed in various scriptures to refrain from sinning, to flee from it, and to obey God’s Word. God wouldn’t instruct us to do something we cannot do in His power. So we can stop sinning, but we will sin. It’s the ironic dichotomy of living as followers of Christ while still in this fallen world. So we have to be on guard. We have to be aware of the risks and the pitfalls that will lead us down the path of sin instead of the path of righteousness. Then we will sin less. We might still be a fall risk, but we can fall less. And hopefully I will too. 😉