When your day goes SPLAT!

Have you ever had a day like this?  Where everything has gone wrong?

 Or is there a time when you've just crumbled, like this bread?

Just the other day, I felt just like these loaves of Snickerdoodle bread, literally falling in a grocery store and going SPLAT!  Yep, I tripped with a bowl of fruit in one hand and a birthday card in another, and did the most magnificent belly flop ever! Not tripping and landing on my backside… No, that would've graceful in comparison. Instead I was completely laid out on my stomach, the fruit bowl and card flew ahead of me, while I flopped on the concrete floor of that grocery store. 

Talk about going splat! And in front of all the people in this very crowded store.

Before you even say something against the store, or lawsuit, or even get angry because I fell in a public place, I must say the two employees of the store were immediately by my side.  And a young man in his 20s who was at the nearest check-out line immediately reached for me, extending his hand and helping me to my feet. I think he knew instinctively that I wanted to get up as soon as possible. 

Of course, once on my feet, I realized how hard I had banged my knee.  But nothing was broken, I was standing. I'm sure I was a bright shade of red, so I chose not to have them write up an incident report.  Amazingly, the fruit bowl stayed in tact so it was thrust into my hands, again by the caring young man, and I was on my way.

It was only after I got into my car that the tears came. OUCH! And of course, I was a little in shock.  One second you're walking out of the store, on your way to your church life group meeting, and the next you're splayed at on the floor, having done what I'm sure was a spectacular belly flop.  I'm surprised my breast implants didn't break!

Once in the car, I wasn't sure what do next.  My hubby was home sick, and I was scheduled to facilitate our life group meeting that night. But I was happy to be in my car, away from all of the prying eyes of everyone in the store.

What about you? Have you had a day when everything goes wrong? When you're whole day takes a wildly different turn?

How many of us lash out in anger? How many lash out with tears? How many of us want to crawl in a hole and hide? 

Part of me wanted to stay on the ground (I immediately sat up from my belly-flopped, splayed out position), just to have a moment to collect myself. But there were too many people around. I can still hear the gasps of those who witnessed my great tumble.

But the other part of me wanted to run…rather limp…away as fast as I could. Being angry never really crossed my mind. Suing the grocery store seemed ridiculous –  nothing was broken, no permanent damage. So, I drove on to my life group meeting and my friends.

I turned to them, tears in my eyes, trembling, and feeling somewhat ridiculous. And they showered me with hugs, ice packs and Tylenol. And onward we went with our meeting. I have no idea what I said, or how well the meeting was facilitated, but I think I just wanted to keep pushing forward. To move on as quickly as I could from the spectacle of falling down.

Could I have done that had I chosen to stay on the floor? Or crawled inside a proverbial hole? As tempting as that was, I think it's always best to move forward from the days where we go splat.

I want to be the type of person who can put the past behind me.  If I had crawled into my shell or driven straight home, I would've missed that time with friends – embarrassed as I was to have them see my tears - just from a silly fall.

There's always something to learn from those tougher days – in the times when we stumble and even fall on our faces.  The beauty is, we don't have to stay in that place. We can find a way to limp out of there, and find healing with friends and loved ones, even during your most embarrassing day.