Sometimes Ice Skaters Fall Down

When I was a kid, roller skating was something that seemed to come naturally to me.  My first skates were the old clamp-on kind.

And then I tried my luck at ice skating while living in Albuquerque. 

It was not a pretty sight.  I spent more time on my bottom than on my feet.

You see, sometimes ice skaters fall down. 

Peggy Fleming and Michelle Kwan are two ladies who epitomize grace and beauty on ice skates.  They each glide across the ice with ease and do their flips and spins and twirls with the greatest of ease.  They are such a joy to watch perform! 

However …

However, both ladies have fallen down on the ice. 

It’s not a matter of how many times we fall down, on the ice, at a particular job, in piano practice or singing a solo.  The telling difference is that we get back up and keep going. 

During my music ministry days we would feature a small child either singing or playing during our Sunday night church time.  Cheryl was one of the kids I featured regularly and it seems that every time she would get up on stage she would make a mistake and have to start over, sometimes two and three times. 

I was encouraged to stop using her, but continued, knowing she was in front of people who loved her and supported her and we would look past the temporary blunders to participate in the musical development of this young performer.

Years later, she came up to me at a church reunion and profusely thanked me for the faith I had shown in her during those maturing moments and how she used those fumbles and stumbles and was singing professionally and having a marvelous musical career. 

What a moment.

Sometimes we fall down.  Sometimes we sing flat.  Sometimes we make a wrong judgment call.  If we are attempting anything of worth we will make mistakes. 

Ah, but what do we do with those mistakes? 

“We pick ourselves up

Dust ourselves off

And start all over again.”

Let me close with this:

There once was a small boy who was given a pair of ice skates for Christmas.  He was eager to use his skates so his mother took him to the nearby pond.

It seems he fell more times than he successfully skated around the pond and his mother was fearful for his safety and kept encouraging him to stop before he hurt himself.

His response:  “Mom, I didn’t get these skates to give up with.  I got them to skate with.”

What determination. 

What a marvelous attitude.

Sure, we will fall down, we will miss the mark, and we will make a miscue or two.  But we get back up.  We keep trying.  We keep going. 

We have sticking power. 

We get back up and we start all over again.