Rise up

Years ago, eons ago really, I was about to be a junior in high school. My parents decided to take a late, very late summer trip to West Virginia to visit my uncle and aunt. It was our normal summer vacation, but this one was incredibly late, so late that preseason football had begun.

I was about to be a starter on the defensive line, perhaps the smallest such being in the country, and I was hot. I didn't want to go to West Virginia. I fought tooth and nail, but my parents insisted because they said it would probably be my last (of very, very many) trips to Fairmont. Turns out they were right.

I promised my coach I would run every day of the week we would be gone. I ran the first day we were there. Oops.

When I got back, the first day of practice in the blazing Mississippi summer sun was deadly. We were running a drill, throwing ourselves on the ground, rolling, rising, throwing ourself on the ground. I was dying. I finally, after showing what I perceived to be much heart, had to pull myself out.

And in front of God and everyone, I threw up. Hurled. Blew. Collapsed into a heap.

My coach was all over it in a second, leaning over me (who was very sure he needed an ambulance), screaming at me, letting me know what he thought of my work ethic. One week and I was somehow less than I was. One week and I wasn't able to cope with all those who had been running in the heat and blazing sun while I lolly-gogged in the West Virginia high country.

I didn't start the first game of the season, taking that long to get back into the good graces of our coach.

I write all that to write this: Today is much the same. For a week of flu, a week away from the daily grind, a week away from writing, teaching, speaking to humans in words they can actually understand, and I've found myself struggling to, er, do anything.

But I will.

Singer/songwriter Matt Maher writes it this way:
When you see the road ahead
that you've been down before
when you're half way to no where
and you can't pay the toll
You're hanging onto mercy
withered on the vie
with your feet on the ground,
your head in the clouds
and your heart on the line
open up your eyes
You've got to rise up
when this life has got you down
you're got to look up
when you search and nothings found
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the love that's here and now
It's coming down, so rise up.

Trying is worth the effort, even if you can't get all the way back up.