**Day 1 - Falling Down**

Hello. I’m Ben, and I’ve been climbing and cutting a tree most days for the past month. I don’t like it at all. It’s not my usual sort of thing - I’m very indoors, and there’s an extent to which I went against the tree as a deliberate venture outside my own comfort-zone. The ladder was tall, the work was hard, and the tool was full of power. But that much was a new year’s resolution. To try things I didn’t want to try.

On Monday, I fell off the ladder, and I did not die.

I woke up with very little awareness of my situation. I was lying on my back. I could see a fence above me, the grey skies and the tree. I didn’t recognise it at all. ‘Was I cutting that tree?’ I asked. ‘That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I would do’. My memory was very small. When asked what day it was, I said ‘that’s a good question’. I had no idea. Having amnesia was frustrating. I knew I didn’t know the answer, but wanted to rummage around for it. If I can’t remember, I’ll seem foolish, I thought.

It was fair enough that I didn’t recognise the tree. I had never seen it that short. As it turned out, I cut off a vast branch, which fell on me. I was, briefly and painfully, a Ben sandwich. This was so surprising that I fell off the ladder, three or four metres down and landed head, neck and shoulder on my neighbour’s paving. I did not die.

I learned, and remembered, and struggled on the ground. And I prayed, can’t I go back in time? Can’t I go back and start the day again, and go up the ladder with more care, and side-step my inability to rise up? Couldn’t life play out like a game, or Run Lola Run? That prayer brought back some memories. Every single time I’d climbed the ladder, I’d prayed, strongly and with gusto for protection. For myself and for others, but very much for myself. I could see the heights and sense the horrors. This was a five metre ladder, extendable to almost twice that. There were times when the prayer seemed responded to with warning. Some days the electric saw wouldn’t work up the ladder. A broken fuse, or a divine warning? I took it as both. Sometimes I the situation gave me the willies, and I knew I had to retreat. Paranoia, or warning? It’s fun to speculate, and I don’t know.

So why wasn’t I kept from falling? I don’t know, but I have a plethora of ideas, which I’ll boil down to two that I prefer. I’ve seen a video of the accident. Ava caught it as a record of the final fall of the final branch. And in the video I can see what I couldn’t see up close. The branch I cut was huge. Once it was cut, the length of the branch was the same as the height of the tree. If I had had any perspective, if I’d opened my eyes on the last day, I could have seen it falling on me. For all my prayer, on the final day of the tree battle, I had stopped looking and listening for warnings. And secondly, I saw footage of my fall. I fell on my head, my neck and my shoulder. It’s amazing to me that my injuries were no worse. No wonder I had amnesia. No wonder I’m still, to this day, blanking on words like ‘penicillin’, and I know there are some lyrics I normally know, just outside my grasp. I fell a fall that could have been utter disaster. I am as alive now as ever, if not more so.

In Ben-Them, I want to talk about prayer, speaking, and listening. About the Bible, God’s word, and about our lives, my own life being one blessed with creativity and non-binarism and faith and pancakes and plenty else. A tale of the Christ, who connects with us all. And I’d like to delve into depression with some more honesty. Fresh wounds, and old ones to heal. The tree has changed some of my plans, as I entered Pancake Day with my arm in a sling, and a question hovering over whether I have clavicle surgery ahead. Let’s discover together.