I Am A Warrior

I Am A Warrior

Every day, I get out of bed.  No small feat, truly.  While physically there is nothing wrong with me in terms of getting out of bed, emotionally, some days are harder to get started than others. 

There are days when I almost bound out of bed, ready to take on the day, excited for whatever tasks I have ahead of me at work, and looking forward to the evening when I get to spend time with my husband and my children.

Other days, I don’t want to get out of bed and face the tasks I have ahead of me at work.  I just want to stay curled up in bed and sleep.  Not because the tasks themselves are insurmountable, but because the black cloud that is always somewhere in the periphery, has found its way in front of me. 

No one knows the battles people face and fight day after day after day.  They see someone and make snap judgements based on what they see (I discuss this more in depth in my piece about What We See).  But really, you have no idea what any one person is facing at any point in their day.

Recently there was a video circulating on Facebook that has gone viral.  It started as a photo of three young men leaning out of the window of a drive-through coffee shop and holding the hand of the person in the car.  The story came out almost immediately.  She is, evidently, a regular at that shop, and the boys – all of them teens – recognized her and recognized that she seemed distraught. 

She was. She had just lost her husband and was feeling overwhelmed.  She had tears on her cheeks when she pulled up to the window.  This was during the busy morning rush, and the boys were eager to get through the drive-through line as quickly as possible.  Until this woman pulled up to the window.

What did these boys do?  These boys stopped everything they were doing and prayed with the woman to help her find strength to navigate her new life without her husband.  They held up the line of customers to offer love, support and prayer to a woman they really only knew by her coffee order.  They also gave her her coffee for free, as an act of goodwill and because everyone needs a treat now and then.

My office is attached to a shopping mall.  As part of my lunch and for exercise, I always go for a walk that takes me around the mall a couple of times.  I see a lot of people during my walk, and I have learned from watching the people as I walk, not to judge.  The woman pushing the dog in the stroller?  Don’t judge (and man, did I use to judge people like that).  Maybe she lost a child once, and this is how she copes.  Maybe the dog is handicapped and can’t walk much, but she enjoys being out.

The older child in a stroller?  Maybe that child isn’t able to walk for long for whatever reason. 

I see business people walking to and fro.  I see people meandering – some older, some new moms pushing strollers.

We all have our own stories and our own battles to fight.  Some of us are battling inner demons.  Some of us are battling addiction.  Some of us are battling our own feelings of self-loathing.  Some of us are just hoping they can keep it together until the end of the day.

I battle depression.  More often than not, I win the battle.  And when I’m losing the battle, you likely wouldn’t know it just by looking at me.  Because I’m up.  And I’m at work.  And I am a warrior.