"Should you fall even fifty times a day, never on any account should that surprise or worry you. Instead, ever so gently set your heart back in the right direction and practice the opposite virtue, all the time speaking words of love and trust to our Lord after you have committed a thousand faults, as much as if you had committed only  one. Once we have humbled ourselves for the faults God allows us to become aware of in ourselves, we must forget them and go forward." (St Jane Frances de Chantal)

Practical spiritual direction! How often we allow our many falls to prevent us from learning from them and moving on in living again for the Lord. The Evil One delights in our discouragements and negative thoughts about ourselves. He invokes self-condemnation and failure in us, so that we will remain in our faults, rather than break through to the truth. God, on the other hand, does not condemns us but offers us the grace of mercy and forgiveness to get up and start afresh, no matter how  often we fall. It is not our falls he looks at but at our rising to walk again in his presence. Rather than look at the ground when we fall, he invites us to look to his unconditional love for us, which cannot be erased by our falls.