Raise Your Head

Have you ever had a fall so bad that you just kinda laid there splayed on the ground until you got the will to get up? Maybe your hands were stinging and you focused on the pain emanating from your palms while your face burned and you desperately hoped no one saw you fall? 

I had such a fall when I was in 6th grade and still today reminiscing on the moment brings heat to my cheeks. I was getting off the bus and anyone who has ridden on those big yellow atrocities knows about those gigantic steps. I am not sure how adults expect any child to navigate them safely. Nonetheless, it was not the climb up that did me in but the climb down. 

I am not even sure how it happened but my feet stopped at the last step and my body kept moving forward. Before I knew it I was being catapulted into the air falling chest first onto the ground. I laid there for what felt like hours but was actually mere seconds, vaguely registering my concerned bus driver asking me if I was okay and trying to mentally calculate if anything hurt. I remember the smell of the asphalt and the way it looked up close; the tiny black granules all squished together looked like a mosaic and in a weird way was kind of pretty. In those seconds, laying there somehow felt easier than getting up and if I could I may still be laid out in that middle school parking lot to this day. Eventually though, that feeling wore out and it was less comfortable staying face first on the ground than the potential embarrassment and pain to rise up.

My first motion after falling was to raise my head. I looked up and found the eyes of my then longtime crush. He begrudgingly made eye contact and then did the merciful thing and stepped around my sprawling body to make his way into the school. 

After that first moment of raising my head, the rest of my body started to follow its lead. When you're down, oftentimes the biggest hurdle is the first movement towards getting up. For me raising my head, while painful (though more emotionally than physically), provided the rest of my body the inertia to rise. In your own life, maybe you are not physically sprawled on the ground in front of your crush but hit after hit has you feeling like the smallest person on the planet. Maybe someone has pushed you down and you can still feel the pressure against your back. Perhaps you yourself have made choices that have you unsure if you can ever climb out of the prison of your own making. 

You know that feeling, the one in between staying down and getting up. The war inside you that says staying down is comfortable and getting up is scary in its unknowns. But, my friend, how horrible would it be to stay in that in between for the rest of your life? Is the physical act of raising your head really that much worse than staying down? 

I am not asking you to get up like a child on Christmas morning, excited about the possibilities. 

I am asking you to make the awkward and painful choice to lift your head towards higher ground. Simply look up. The rest of the motions will follow, though not promised to be without pain, but you will rise.