I fell. Hard.

I mean that literally, and I need you to understand the full picture here.

It was during the World Baseball Classic (because I'm ridiculous about baseball). I ran to the bedroom between innings to change into my comfy pants, a completely reasonable and important errand (don't judge). And while I was at it, I noticed my sock wasn't sitting right. So I raised my leg to straighten it.

One moment I was a functional adult managing a minor wardrobe situation, and the next I was executing a slow-motion backward descent that was the opposite of graceful.

On the way down, I had a whole thought process. The corner of the bed will catch me. No. The small table. No. (It has wheels and we have a hardwood floor.) Oh. Oh no. I am going to the floor.

And I did. Head to the dresser, then to the ground. The dresser is fine. (Ultimately, I am, too. I have a big ole knot on the back of my noggin, and my pride broke a little, but otherwise, with a day to rest, I am fine.)

My husband came rushing in. "Can you get up?"

"Yes," I said. "But not yet."

I needed to just be there for a bit.

Here is what gets me about this: I was so confident in my plan. I had options. I was problem-solving on the way down. And every single thing I reached for gave way, and there was nothing left to do but land. Hard. And fabulously ungracefully.

We do this in life, too. We lose our footing over something small, something ordinary, maybe even something a little embarrassing, and we reach for whatever looks like it might hold us. And sometimes nothing holds. Sometimes we just go down.

"Yes, but not yet." I keep turning that phrase over. It is not defeat. It is not giving up. It is the wisdom to know that rising too fast, before you have caught your breath and found your bearings, is just another way to fall. The pause on the floor is not wasted time. It is part of getting up well.

God meets us on the floor. Not only in the triumphant moments, but in the sock-adjustment moments that go sideways, in the dazed pause before we find our footing again. Resurrection does not skip the part where you are still on the ground. It begins there.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that if life has knocked you down, you give yourself permission to say "yes, but not yet." You do not have to leap up and perform your recovery. Rest for a moment. Catch your breath. Grace will still be there when you rise. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa