Yesterday, I received a text message at the tail end of my boys soccer game and before my daughter’s last game that I was to coach, that opened up the mended part of my heart. It felt like the pulling apart of the shattered pieces of me. Those parts were pulling away from each other and it was shaking the core of me. The shattered parts that I had worked hard to try to glue back together. As I read the words in the text and tried to respond, the rushing sensation of demons that torment my mind, heart and soul far to often came rushing back to the forefront of my head. Most know me, most know parts of me… most would not realize the depth of the battles that rage within my mind. If I lose a soccer game, make a mistake, or don’t do something the way someone thinks I should. I question. I question myself, my worth, my existence, and my place. I immediately, internalize that I am to blame, I am at fault or something is just wrong with me. Rejection, shame, guilt consume me. I think I am a disappointment and the people, who I think love me I now doubt. As I sat in my car trying to comfort myself and pull myself together for the girls I still needed to coach it was discovered we were at the wrong spot for the game. So I sat in the car getting ready to go 5 minutes up the road, but I needed a minute. I needed to get myself together and then my door popped open and two of my players jumped into my car. “Our dad’s are at the gas station, can you take us?” Yes, yes I can. I can do this. I can pull myself together. A few short texts, so everyone knew where to go and whose kids were with me, we arrived at the fields. The car ride over was silent, they didn’t ask and I didn’t speak. When we arrived I mustered the strength to tell them where to go and that I would be out there shortly. They exited the car as I sat silently.  I sat in solitude of this moment. Could i just cry and release the pain inside of me? Could I comfort my broken being? I fought myself I wanted to let go, but I had to be something to 15 girls, who look at me to be a pillar of strength, to represent and be a role model, I couldn’t go out broken and shattered. I thought in that moment about my life and how some 15 years ago, I was broken and I had this moment in time, where a pastor/father figure embraced me in that brokenness and I could have let go, buried my head in his chest and cried, but I didn’t. I didn’t because thats not what strength looks like. And there in my car, I wanted a Dad, a Mom, someone to allow me to bury my head and cry and let out all the built up pain inside of me. To release the pain consuming me because now, now the messages are filling my head, that I am simply a failure, I am not enough, and I am a disappointment. I fought the urge to text my “Dad” like man in my life and tell him, how I don’t get how he loves me, or wants to invest in me, I am not yours and the ones I belong to reject me. I fought it because I didn’t want my words to hit his hears and then for him to be disappointed in me because I couldn’t just believe I won’t disappoint him. So in these short few moments of my car, I breathed deep and sucked up, and pushed down the brokenness of my body and exited my car to be what I needed to be for the girls waiting for me.

My somber being, slowly peeled away as the girls played soccer, the game that always served as an outlet for my childhood pain. We finished the game with a win, and now I had the trek back home with my daughter and her friend. After dropping her friend off at home and us arriving at our house, we exited the car and my daughter stopped at the doorway and asked a question. She said “mom are you okay, because at the game you seemed different and someone thought maybe you had been crying, but you don’t cry” I paused and just confirmed I am fine, or I will be fine. I walked into the house and talked to my husband, but even with him I can’t break down. Sometimes, I do wonder what he would even do if I actually cracked open and cried. He would probably be confused.

I waited a day, and then I texted the “mom” like woman in my life because, I had a migraine and I wasn’t thinking straight, but I also knew she would directly tell me what I needed to hear… and she did. Later, that evening, I was amongst friends and talking about this upcoming race that I am running with my “Dad”  and I stated how surprised I was that he said  yes, when I asked him if he would run half marathon with me. (he has never even run a 5k) One of the women with me said, “he said yes because he loves you” In that moment my mind stopped. I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. So being me and in the mindset I was I texted him and asked “you love me that much that you are willing to run 13.1 miles with me?” and He responded “Yup” I still don’t get him and his wife. I don’t get how they just love me, why. I am just this girl who entered their lives in an unusual fashion and they just accepted me and welcomed me into their circle, when I was just a teenager.

So what did I do in those silenced moments in my car, I cried and then I stuffed. And then I believed the voices in my head that told me I was of no importance to anyone…  that I belonged to no one. The battlefield of the mind is alive and active. I cried out and asked God why He has me here, why do I have to be tormented with such battles. When will enough be enough. When will you take this battle from me? When will I feel content as a woman of God? When will I never lose sight that I am enough, just the way I am?

So this is why a hug scares me. I am afraid in the vulnerability of a hug that the walls will come crashing down and I won’t have the strength to hold back the ugly cry that will emerge from me. I won’t be able to fight it any longer and I will crash. Monday night, as I left a group women, an older woman hugged me, asked if I was good and I could feel my eyes well up because I was at risk, my state of being was at risk of being jeopardized. I just said, yes, I am good. One day, the broken insides of me will be healed, but until then I will bravely believe that God’s purpose for my struggle, is just that purposeful. I will trust.