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# Don't Trip
- URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/dont-trip/
- Published: 2025-07-16T11:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-18T14:46:43.000Z
- Description: The things that so irritate us in the moment are often precisely the things which give meaning and joy to our lives.
- Author: Mere Orthodoxy
- Tags: Rachel Welcher, Formation, Journal, Spring 2025

Don’t trip over the firetruck  
in the shower, the one waiting  
beside the soap. It is set to be  
healed in the morning by a  
mini-mechanic who is still  
sleeping in her toddler bed.

She will soon rise and give it a  
proper tune-up, not with plastic  
tools, but with her doctor’s kit,  
which is missing an otoscope,  
but includes a rogue flashlight.

Do not trip over the truck’s  
cousin toys, left rolling on the  
floor, perched by the basement  
door, arranged in perfect  
fighting position. Do not curse,  
as though they were the enemy.  
They are the heroes in our story;  
the block-scattered heartbeat that  
you strained to hear all those times  
when there was only silence on the  
other end of the doctor’s doppler.

The dinosaur stickers that will not  
come off the hardwood floor are  
actually small, snarled-toothed saints.

They pray for you.

Like you prayed for them.

Do not trip over joy,  
which is often hiding behind  
the chaos that exasperates us.  
You might break your neck one  
day, but at least you will die happy.

*Originally published in the spring 2025* Mere Orthodoxy *print journal. To become a member and receive future issues,* [*join today*](https://mereorthodoxy.com/subscribe)*.*