Falling

The first time I fell down the stairs at work, there was a moment of absolute freedom. It happened right after the sole of my right shoe failed to lift off the step, refusing to follow the rest of my body downward. Its stutter, rubber on rubber unwilling to move, caused my body to twist in a way it hadn't before and that I hope will never happen again. During that twist, I felt a pop in my lower back. That pop was the freedom, a release of years of tension as a problematic muscle finally gave up its struggle to hold the weight around it and tore. The two seconds before I hit the ground were memorably peaceful. 

Of course, on the ground, not being able to move my legs because of the searing pain that exploded in my back every time I tried to use that muscle, that peace was replaced by panic. Well, occasional waves of panic that I talked myself out of. "Okay okay okay," I said to myself and to the empty back staircase to the basement on which I had fallen. "You can lay here for ten more minutes but then we've got to get up and go home." I pictured myself driving back with my left foot on the pedals, taking back roads so as to avoid causing danger to other drivers, and collapsing on my mattress with a heating pad and some ibuprofen. I didn't worry that no one would find me and I honestly didn't really worry about my responsibilities for that day--my walkie had flown out of my hand in the fall, as had my phone, so I couldn't tell if my absence was missed, but summer camp was a well-oiled machine with plenty of replacement parts. It would go on without me. What I needed to do was to summon the grit to stand up and maybe find someone to drive me home. 

I told the IT guy who found me, laying flat on my back with my legs at an awkward angle, that I would be fine in a few minutes, and if he could tell my boss where I was, that'd be great, since I couldn't reach my walkie. I think I actually asked him if he had enough room to walk by or if he needed me to move, though that was more of a courtesy than anything else. I most certainly could not have moved. Luckily, he, and the subsequent six staff members who waited with me for the ambulance to arrive, realized that I was probably in shock and that there was the potential for some spinal damage and that I couldn't just go home with this kind of injury. They all winced when I screamed as the EMT moved my legs and again when the pair of them got me onto the stretcher. 

My boss went with me to the ER and read to me as we waited for me to be seen. Just a note: if possible, don't suffer a catastrophic injury on a Monday. Everyone who doesn't want to pay the weekend fees saves up their pain for business hours, so the line for morphine and an x-ray was long on that afternoon. The line was long enough that we got through several chapters of Game of Thrones (a reading choice which not my best, not my worst for this particular situation) and through a phone call to my parents in which I again dropped my phone and started screaming in pain. My mother had asked if I wanted them to come up, and it suddenly didn't matter that I was a strong, independent twenty-two-year-old with her own job and her own insurance and her own apartment two and a half hours from her parents. It was my first time in an ER and I wanted my mommy. I started to cry and I started to stop myself from crying, but that required me to use the very muscle that had brought me to this place and I dropped the phone in my pain. My boss picked it up and explained what was happening to my mom. My parents were there the next day. 

After the morphine, the doctors figured out that it was just a muscle tear and my friend Pamela came and got me. We picked up the pain med prescription and went home. Now, I have spent years of my life dealing with parents in chronic pain, so I know that in situations like these, you have to stay ahead of the pain and not wait until it hurts to take the next round of pills. I did not set an alarm, though, and so the worst part of this ordeal was probably after the morphine wore off and before the prednisone kicked in, when I laid on my mattress on the floor of my first post-college apartment in the worst pain of my life, trying and failing to stifle moans because I couldn't suck it up anymore. Pamela, who spent the night with me trying to sleep on the couch, still tells me that she remembers what it sounded like to hear me in pain, both of us unable to do anything more to help me. 

There's more to this story. I could talk about how I had to have a traumatic injury before I let anyone help me, or about how vulnerable missing a week of work made me as an intern and temporary employee. I could talk about how this fall almost cost me my next job. I could talk about the ambulance bill, the physical therapy, or the weird detached bit of my spine that's floating around inside my body and is apparently fine. It's all there, avenues to be explored as I think about the couple seconds that were oddly formative in my life. 

My mind flashed through this story and its extraneous bits as I fell down the stairs for the second time at work on Monday, the sole of my right shoe again failing to move, rubber stuck on stone. It was just skinned knees and a bruised shoulder, so I could just pick myself up after a few minutes with a few, "You're okay, you're okay"s, whispered to myself in the same tone I use for the kid I nanny when he tumbles down in his learning attempts at walking. It was an hour or so before my DCOM meeting to get my candidacy for ministry approved, so I'm lucky that I was just shaken and not actually injured this time. Candidacy is apparently difficult to reschedule. 

The fall made me think, though. I've spent the past year and a half learning to live in my body. Or, better, learning to love and listen to my body, learning how my mind cares for and challenges my body and learning how my body can help heal my mind and keep it accountable for my wellbeing. Take, for example, the hug from a friend that taught me what a good hug could be; the half-marathon training and running that showed me what I could really do; hours of holding and carrying and rocking the part-time baby in my life to sleep, which somehow conspires to use more strength and affection than I knew I had; a class on doing liturgy that had me thinking about my shoulders and my feet and my hands and my face as I pray and sing and lead and be. In these and other ways, thinking about my body has been inescapable. 

Life has brought me into my body over the past months. And the scary thing is, I like it here. I like the newfound awareness in my stretching in the morning. I like being able to identify the tension in my shoulders and neck instead of assuming that they had always been one gigantic knot of stress. I like letting my body feel things. I think about how my body felt free for a few seconds as my muscle tore five years ago and I wonder at all the years before that led to that feeling of bliss in detachment. I don't want that anymore. I want to be here, even with the pain. It is frightening to have to so much to lose. 

Here's the other thing about getting to know my body: it makes me incapable of not caring about what happens to yours, no matter who that "you" is. Caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, the sick, the imprisoned, wherever you are and however I can, is a direct consequence of knowing my body and what I need to live in it. The things I consume, the things I throw away, how I regard people with bodies different and more vulnerable than mine, my perspective on all of these things shifts when I live in my body and I think about others in theirs. We are such fragile, precious things, with only each other for help. What we do to each other matters immensely.

Maybe that's why Jesus came into all our fragility, the Word of God shrunk into the form of a precious baby. Being God, he knew that one day his story would reach across the centuries to people who had forgotten their bodies and ignored their pain and, in so doing, forgotten and ignored those around them. He knew that it would speak to the people who, having fallen or having been pushed to the ground, needed to get back up again. He knew it would be with all of them, challenging and comforting. He knows us. He knows what we need.

We never get back up alone.