Strong

I wrote this in September 2009 when my oldest child - Shaner - broke his leg during football two-a-days right before the season started.



I was strong as I sped to the football field. I was strong as I watched my husband carry our 6'1 230 lb linebacker son to the car. Strong as I drove him to the ER, listening to his screams and cries - this young man who doesn't believe in pain, who certainly never stopped for it. The young man who broke his nose the previous week while playing hockey and went to his doctor's office to get a release so that he could play football. My child - who won't even take a Tylenol. Strong through the exam and the x-rays and finally, as they moved him to his room. The room that he'd spend close to a week in while his friends started their junior year and prepared for the football season. Strong as I sat with him - night and day - trying to ease the pain as best I could, knowing it was useless. As they wheeled my baby, my first-born into surgery and through the four hours...shaking the doctor's hand, seeing the x-rays of his rebuilt leg. Strong getting him home and getting him settled; praying to find some magical position that would make him comfortable.

Strong until I stood in the middle of Dicks Sporting Goods looking for the only thing he wanted for school - new Nike socks. As I stood there, surrounded by football cleats, as I'd done so many times before with him, I stopped being strong. I cried. I sat on a bench and wept. It was so unfair; he should be standing there, excitedly picking out his new cleats, eagerly anticipating his first year of first-string on the varsity squad, explaining to me why he needed that $100 UnderArmour. Instead, he was home, in bed, in pain. I cried for the pain he was feeling, for everything he would miss out on this year, for the guilt I felt - when he came home on his break between two-a-days, he had said he didn't feel good...that he didn't feel like going back to his second practice. I wish I'd made him stay. I cried


Then, I came home, and again, I was strong.

Getting to know.......Me

Looking back over the last year or so, I'm really amazed at what I see. I went from being a miserable, sheltered girl who moved out of mom and dad's house, directly into my husband's...someone who was a bit stunted at age 19 (that's when I got married -- with my first child coming that year, and my second the next year). I'd never been on my own, never given myself permission to have a social life, and certainly never gave myself a break for all of my "failures". I stayed because it was what I had convinced myself that I had to do. At first, it was because I felt I'd made my bed and now I had to lie in it....as things got worse and worse, I amended that to "until the kids graduated". Despite this, I never really saw myself as being able to get out...I felt sure I'd be far too weak to leave because I believed that everyone elses' happiness came before mine (this included the happiness of the husband who mistreated me, lied to me, cheated on me and once blacked my eye and choked me out in our back yard after a fight). Thankfully, at some point, I started to realize that I really did deserve to be happy...I do deserve to live my life for ME. Of course, my kids still, and always will come first, but I'm learning so many things about myself all the time. I'm also doing things that make me proud (some of the big things for me have been cooking poultry - the stuff freaks me out - and opening my very first checking account that was mine and mine alone! It may not seem like that big of a deal to some people but for me it was! I'm learning how to be alone and how to be lonely - two completely different things, each with it's own merit. I'm learning who my real friends are and who didn't make the cut. I'm learning that life is too short to not make the very most of every minute of every day! I'm learning who I am and learning to be happy in my own skin. I'm learning not to give other people my power - some people will use me and some will hurt me, but they can only hurt me as much as I allow them to. I'm learning that it's so much better to be me - the person I really am; not some false image projected to distract people from the truth. I've learned that just because someone is blood, it doesn't mean that they'll stick by you when it counts....but the ones who do? They're the only ones that matter. I've learned that I'm such a strong, intelligent woman...much stronger than I ever knew....and I'm proud.