dailydatewithgod

We tend to think of stumbling as failure and something to carry shame about.  Yet anyone who has bothered to try to traverse a different path then they are familiar with will find themselves stumbling.  Perhaps our stumbling is more about how we manage to find our footing once we stumble.  If we get stuck in the shame instead of using the stumbling blocks as building blocks we will end up staying where we are.  Sometimes our stumbling is to wake us up to how we are facing new realities with old lenses.  We are attempting to walk through something new using the usual methods and ideas.  It is when we stumble and get cut or knocked off our feet that we can look at something from a new perspective.  At the very least it is an opportunity to laugh at ourselves.  I remember when I first reached a healthy body weight after being obese most of my life.  Sometimes I would stumble over my own feet.  Me, a dancer, looking like a klutz!  (And actually learning how to dance in a smaller body was an even bigger hurdle requiring a lot of patience).  It was embarrassing but my whole sense of equilibrium had to adjust and it needed time.  This was the part they didn’t mention when they said how fabulous it would be to live in a smaller body. My center of gravity had shifted and I needed to stumble to figure out I did not need to put as much energy behind my steps as I had previously.  If I had not stumbled I would not have learned how to carry myself differently which caused me to see things differently and learn to shift my energy use.