Many of my blogs are related to my life as a football coaches wife. There have been happy blogs, sad ones but always honest and always from my perspective, until today.
This blog I share with you today is written from the eyes of someone else whom I share a 25 year long friendship with. He wrote this after spending a long weekend immersed in our lives that culminated with attending the NFC Championship Game. He knew well the hectic schedule our family lives and the inherent risk of a possible loss. But with true friends it’s never about the win, but about supporting.
He emailed this piece to me as more of a thank you note, but I knew right away I needed to share with all of the football people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and loving over 30+ years of coaching.
It’s said that often others see you better than you can see yourself. Thank you for that Mark!
x’s and o’s,
The Football Wife
The amazing power of a football wife. Not the newly married isn’t this exciting wife, but the I’m in this for life, I’ve moved my family, defended my husband and shed more than a few tears wife. No disrespect to the newbies on the journey, I just haven’t spent time with many of you.
In the best of times, she is the leader of a piece of crazy that few people experience. The organizing, packing, traveling, tailgating and making sure that all the right things happen, in the right order, on game day kinda crazy. Entertaining, coordinating and trying to let friends and family get a taste of her world while always knowing that the taste may be glorious, or it may be unbelievably bitter.
She rides highs and lows that most don’t experience, sometimes over a season and often in a single game. She knows when to be quiet and when to encourage. She knows that on occasion she will make the wrong call, and it will crush her spirit.
She knows that with success comes change and that change comes with failure as well. She knows that she can love a city, but maybe not too much. She knows that when she moves somewhere warm, she should probably hang on to her cold weather gear as well. She can love her colors, but favorites can become hard to match in a single offseason.
She knows that much of her life may be more public than she likes, but that comes with the job. She knows her kids will experience some of the best of life and some of the very worst, simply because their dad is a coach. She knows some friends stick and others are for a moment in time.
She prays that a new home will be as good as the current one as she uses superhuman strength to make it so.
She balances a checkbook wondering how it will ever work out, and then one day may experience reward that comes through family sacrifice that most cannot imagine. She feels a tinge of guilt in her newfound options and isn’t sure she can break from the patterns of modesty it took to get here.
Sometimes she celebrates on the field surrounded by people, cameras and excited fans. Sometimes she is alone in a tunnel, waiting quietly for a husband that is beaten and defeated in the final score; and in his energy to face the people who love him the most.
Sometimes she wears cute outfits and relishes the cheers of fans. Sometimes she wishes her choice of clothing could help her family escape the stares, glances and words that no person, let alone a child should have to hear. The highs are high. The lows are low. Not much lies in the middle.
Yet always she is the family cheerleader, protector and mamma bear. She grinds through another game, season, college or city. She feels great when it all comes together and like a failure when the best laid plans don’t quite turn out that way.
Football wives were meant to be strong, because they have to be. They are also soft because they have to be. They can be a little bitchy because sometimes it is the only thing that will work. But mostly they are the perfect combination of all of the above. They have to be. Too many people rely on them for everything at just the right time and in just the right circumstances.
They are the rock, the heart and the glue of a sisterhood that is not unlike the brotherhood of the sport itself. They are made for the biggest of stages and the smallest of moments. In short, football wives are here because without them there would be no football families. There would be no amazing kids that either embrace it all or survive despite taking a path that ignores the family business.
Thank you, God for football wives. Give them the strength and courage they need each and every morning to shoulder their amazing job. Embrace them, encourage them and plant a knowledge in their heads and hearts that an entire industry is made possible because of who they are and what they do. Lift them up because sometimes, maybe too often, You are the only one who will. Let them rest in themselves, each other, their families and ultimately in You.
Thank you God for football wives. ❤️