This season, let's work on doing more than just surviving...
Not because the season will be easier this year. It will not be easier. Not because the schedule will suddenly be kinder or the demands will somehow be less or football will finally figure out how to share your husband more gracefully with the rest of your life.
None of that is coming. You already know that.
But surviving is what happens when you just get through it. Head down, jaw clenched, braced for impact. Surviving is making it to the other side of the season and feeling relieved that it is over, instead of grateful for what it gave you. Surviving is the lowest possible bar, and most coaches' wives have been clearing it for years and calling it a win.
You were made for more than that. This season was made for more than that.
So let's talk about what surviving is actually costing you. Because I do not think we talk about this part enough.
Surviving costs you your presence. When you are just getting through, you are physically in the room but mentally somewhere else entirely. You are at the game but not really there. You are at the dinner table, but you are running the list in your head. You are lying next to your husband at night but so depleted that the distance between you feels wider than the season created. Your kids are growing up in real time and survival mode is stealing the moments you cannot get back.
Surviving costs you your marriage. Two tired people who are just getting through a season together are not actually doing life together. They are two individuals managing the same schedule from separate emotional places. The connection does not disappear all at once. It just quietly thins out week by week until one day the season ends, and you realize you have not really talked, not really laughed, not really chosen each other in months.
Surviving costs you your faith. Not your belief. You still believe. But there is a difference between a faith that is alive and active and one that is running on fumes in the background of a life that is too full and too fast for it to breathe. Survival mode crowds God out, not because you stopped loving Him but because you stopped having the margin to actually meet with Him. And a faith that is not fed does not stay strong. It just quietly gets smaller.
Surviving costs you yourself. The things that make you you- your friendships, your interests, your rest, your sense of humor, your ability to feel something other than tired- those are the first things that go when survival mode moves in. And they go so gradually that you stop missing them. You forget what it felt like to feel full. You forget what it felt like to laugh at something that was not born from exhaustion. You forget that you are a person with a life of your own that exists outside of what you do for everyone else.
And here is the part that breaks my heart a little.
Most coaches' wives have been surviving for so long that they have stopped believing anything else is available to them during the season. They have made peace with the erosion. They have accepted the distance, the depletion, and the flatness as the price of this life and stopped asking if there is another way.
There is another way.
It requires intention, prevention, and Jesus. It is about deciding in advance what this season will mean for your family, your marriage, your faith, and yourself, and making small, protected decisions that keep you pointed in that direction when everything around you gets loud.
We created something to help you do exactly that.
The Friday Night Wives Survival Mode Prevention Plan is a free download built specifically for the coach's wife who is ready to stop just getting through the season and start actually living it. It is practical. It is simple. It is full of ideas to help you make some changes for the better.
Download it below before the season starts. Because the best time to prevent survival mode is before you are already in it.
This season belongs to you too. Not just to the team. Not just to the schedule. Not just to everyone who needs something from you.
To you.
Go live it.
***This space is about supporting the women behind the sidelines. We’ve created a few favorite wear-on-repeat pieces inspired by this life, just in case you want to check them out!***