Jump Up, Nadia

So you know how it goes when you have all these great plans for doing and being good and then you go and mess up?

I did that the other day. I got angry. I said things I shouldn’t have said. I feel really bad about it.

So today I am writing a pep talk about making mistakes and getting up and trying again.

When my first child was learning to walk, we were watching the 1976 summer Olympics. We especially enjoyed a wonderful Romanian gymnast, 14-year-old Nadia  Comăneci, who earned 3 gold medals that year with scores of perfect 10s. But as I recall, in one of her routines, Comaneci fell off the balance beam. The crowd let out a collective “oooooh” of disappointment and sympathy for her. But that girl did not pause a moment before jumping right back on the beam and completing a beautiful routine.

After watching that display of courage, every time Anna in her efforts to walk would thump down on her diaper, we would reach out to help her up and say encouragingly, “Jump up, Nadia!”

Falling didn’t matter. Jumping up and trying again did.

That’s the way Heavenly Father sees us too. We are only toddlers spiritually. Of course we fall down. Of course we make mistakes. Of course we lose our tempers, act selfishly, forget our good intentions. Heavenly Father expects it.

But what matters is that we don’t stay down. What matters is that we reach out to God’s outstretched arms and take His hand to help us up. What matters is that we say we are sorry, learn from our fall, try to make amends, and rely on God to help us do better next time.

It doesn’t matter how many times we fall, if we, like Nadia, jump up and try again.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation . . .: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

2 Corinthians 7:10