Dear Warrior Moms,
I was sitting at the doctor’s office, waiting in the patient room, telling myself not to cry or make a fool of myself; I was telling myself not to let “emotion” get the best of me. I didn’t want tears documented in my file because I thought it would prove weakness and instability. I made the doctor appointment after two months of stomach pain unlike any I’ve ever had. Sometimes the stomach pain went up into my chest and my heart muscle ached, but most of the time, it was just pure pain in my stomach. It came and went, and I called it a lot of things until one Friday morning it hurt so bad that I felt like a plastic cup with a cut in it was in the core of my stomach, and every now and then the cut in the cup would grab part of my insides and it HURT. It doubled me over, really, and I called and made an appointment for the following Monday. So, here I was, it was Monday morning, and I was waiting in the patient room, telling myself to act normal at all costs.
But you know how that works, sometimes your mind is very strong – Arnold Schwarzenegger strong, but emotions still march in like hungry troops on the front lines, and you eventually lose the battle to tears. And so, I quit talking to myself and started talking to God. No, not out loud. “God, please help me, I feel like crying. Why do I want to cry about everything in my life in the midst of stomach pain? It’s like the pain is a catalyst to rapid emotions about every other detail in my life. If I didn’t have the pain, I’d keep on keeping on, but the physical pain renders me helpless and causes me to reflect on the emotional pain that I’m enduring on a daily basis – which by the way, I thought I was doing fine with. The only way I know how to deal with the news that Jacob will go blind is to GIVE IT TO YOU, and to keep on keeping on – praying, waiting on you, believing that all things work together for good, facing each day with hope in the midst of apparent despair – what else can I do? But here’s my question? Why is it that when you go through tragedy and the fire is very hot, people understand that you have a HALL PASS in life to cry – for about two weeks, but after the two week period, your Hall Pass expires and people expect you to get back to normal – even though your circumstance is everything but normal – even though the circumstance – the news – is still what it is, why is it that after two weeks, or two months – whatever the silent window is, people expect you to get back to the business of living and being normal? AND more importantly, why is it that when you happen to cry people think, “Oh, man, she’s lost it; she’s out of control,” when in reality, the most silent seemingly normal people have turned out to be the craziest and the most deadly. People who never deal with the emotion, who walk around with suppressed tears and fears, suddenly explode in rage. So, why are tears such a sign of weakness in this world? It seems to me that they lead to strength.” I was praying all this – talking this all out with the LORD, and I decided to take a break, though I did notice I was feeling better. Talking things out with a friend most always makes you feel better, and talking with the LORD is talking to my Best Friend, and He always helps me feel better as He helps me work it out.
I looked around at the plastic magazine rack on the wall. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose body was muscular and had great form, was featured on the cover of a magazine, with a by-line about how he’s lived the American Dream, how he is the American Dream personified, and I decided to read it. After all, I’ve always wanted a beautiful body, and I was full of dreams, so I decided to see what else we had in common other than big dreams and big calves. When I was in the Air Force, my sergeant always asked me when I was going to get that anchor tattoo on my calf?! Can you believe that? Well, it just goes to prove that other people other than myself have noticed that my calves are the same size as my thighs. I may as well admit to you that I’m also self-conscious about my big hands and my big nose – but that’s all the secrets that I’ll reveal now. I could tell you how much I weigh too, but like I said, that’s enough sharing for now.
Back to Arnold. This is the jist of the article: It was about how he confronted his fear and discovered his weaknesses; He focused on his weakness, which at the time, if I remember correctly, was the fact that his arms weren’t muscular enough compared to the rest of his body. He worked on them and looked at them every day, and bit by bit, his arms caught up with the rest of his physique. It may seem silly to get a huge life lesson out of reading about Arnold Schwarzenegger working towards bigger arm muscles, but if you bear with me, you’ll see where I’m going. I thought about how I had recently cried at work in my friend, Fredda’s office. She’s my friend and a paralegal that I work with, and she’s so smart - especially about life issues. I remember apologizing for crying about Jacob’s eyes, and she said, “That’s o.k., sometimes, if you aren’t looking, you are just going along fine and wham! Emotions come up from behind you and runs you right over – doesn’t it?” I thought what she said was a good visual. She was exactly right. Emotion is kind of like that, one minute you are fine, the next second: WHAM! It comes up from behind and catches you on your blind side, and you are rendered helpless. And so, to make a long story short, I realized that dealing with Jacob’s sight was terribly hard, and I didn’t have to “act” as if I was fine. They key, I realized, was to allow myself to feel sad, but to give it up to God rather than try to hide from the pain and have it run me over when I least expected it.
The pain would still be there, the tears would still come, but instead of trying to be tough, I was going to give into it – not give up – but give into it, and let myself feel all the things that I was trying NOT to feel in order to stay in control. You see, I’m not in control anyway, so why not turn around and stare right square into “blindness” and the “possibility thereof” and start the stare down! Why not! If anything, it put me on the offensive rather than on the defensive in all the Hellish pain and in all my human weakness; it made me feel strong to turn around and stare at it with God rather than run from it. It’s a lie to think we are in control anyway. When our last breath will come, we don’t know; all I know is that amid all the uncertainty in this life, I’d rather be looking at it head on rather than running from it in fear.
The main point is that if you are questing after your fears and weaknesses, you are on the offensive instead of on the defensive. If you are running from them, you remain in the vulnerable - un-strategic position of protecting yourself rather than preserving towards a goal. Now, it could be argued that you may be “strategic” in your survival techniques, but all your energy is still spent on the strategy of survival rather than the strategy of success and moving on. Do you see the difference?
And so, I thought of Arnold and how he, as the articles said, IS the American Dream, and I realized that Arnold and I had a lot in common. We both had big dreams, big calves, big hopes, and big fears, and we both had the desire to become and overcome the impossible. There is much that one cannot control, but there is one very important thing that one can control - our response. Let’s face it, the only thing that we are truly in control of in this world is our response to it.
Warrior Moms, if you are like me, and you have silently noticed this HALL PASS philosophy that goes on behind the scenes, feel proud: you’re smart. You’re smart because the main lesson in discovering the HALL PASS philosophy is that it’s not so much the “world” doing it, but even more so, it’s a built in mechanism within yourself that tells you to move on, to pick yourself up, even though you don’t feel like it and even though you don’t want to. This silent HALL PASS theory seems to me, to be more of a built in mechanism to persevere rather than a pressure from the world. It seems God-given to me. As much as you want to quit and give in, something inside you makes you realize that you can’t. And you may be mad that you can’t quit, especially when you look around and you seem to think that it’s the WORLD telling you that you’re silent HALL PASS has expired – but really, if you think about it, don’t you think that it’s more than that? Don’t you think that maybe it’s the silent God-voice within all of us – our God-given conscience that tells us that it’s time to stand back up and to march on? And if you are like me, and you, at first, got mad with the world and those around you because your HALL PASS had expired, you can rejoice now because now you truly know that you have a Savior who cares enough about you that He built within you the ability and the power not to hold onto the HALLPASS of life too long. If you have big dreams and big hopes in one hand, and a HALL PASS in the other, put the HALL PASS down and press on to claim the prize in Christ Jesus.
Warrior Moms Unite! ™
HALL PASS
Do you have a hall pass
In life
Have you struggled amid
The strife
I know me too
And what do we do
But cry and cry and cry
And when the tears make us tired
And we get down to the
Wire
Then tell me, what do we do
Well we are colored
Blue and we have holes
In our shoes
And the mud and the water seeps in
I’ll tell ya we put down our HALL PASS
And we give it to HIM
That’s it – that’s all –
When we are tapped out
And we’ve cried and we’ve
Shouted
And emotion has crowded our heart
The only place to start
IS OVER
You take what you’ve been given
And you acknowledge the blow
But don’t you deep down
Feel that you NOW
Know more
Than before
Don’t you hear
That deep down voice
Telling you to make the choice
And move on
It’s not the world
Telling you it’s not fair
As if THAT you didn’t already know-
No it’s the Savior
Calling you on
Telling you He knows the
Road is long
But the Journey has just begun…
It’s the Son
The Son of God
Wanting to help you
With your problems
And move on
To a new dawn
If mercies are new
Every morning
And I know they are
Put the HALL PASS down
And wear the crown
That God has waited and
Waited to give you
There’s freedom in knowing about
The HALL PASS
But there’s victory that
Will last a lifetime
Like the wine
That flowed without end
In the feeding of the 5,000
Acknowledge the pain
And cry – Yes you’ll need to
But after that ask
What would Jesus do
He’d move on in weakness
But with all of God’s strength
And the JOURNEY’S LENGTH
Would shorten
It’s a lie to hold on to the HALL PASS
And justify our sadness
When there’s one greater than us
Waiting to give us
Eternal gladness
America is full of Hall Passes
But hope deferred makes the heart sick
So don’t hold on to the Hall Pass for too long
It’s just a trick
To remain idle
And do you really want to
Be held liable
For giving up
When you’ve had God
All along
Who makes dreams and life
Break into song
The Journey keeps on
HALL PASSES are short
That’s all I have to report
I’m glad I’m glad
No I’m not mad
That HALL PASSES don’t last
Because I’m running on past
…to victory
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
P.S. In regard to the stomach pain, it turns out that it was due to acid caused from stress. My doctor prescribed Nexium and after about 2 weeks, the pain was gone. Hats off to the “little purple pill.”
Kristina Seymour loves to encourage and equip women through the Word and through community. She is the author of The Warrior Mom Handbook, The Warrior Mom Leadership Manual, and The Warrior Wife Handbook; they are available at Amazon.com. Kristina's Bible studies are for women who desire to live by faith in the midst of their everyday lives. She has learned that women can't survive on caffeine and animal crackers alone; women in the Word and in community are united and able to stand firm. To learn more about Kristina, please visit her website, https://kristinaseymour.com/. God loves to share His story of love and grace through us all, and Kristina believes that everyone has a story to tell.