Still on Guard · Day 1 of 7
The Boy at the Window
I didn't grow up learning what safety felt like. I learned what survival felt like.
When I was a little boy, not long after my parents separated, my father said he was on his way to pick me up. So I sat in a chair at our big picture window and waited. I sat there the whole day, from sun up until my mother told me it was time for bed.
He never came.
Weeks later, when he finally did show up, I asked him why he hadn't come. Instead of an explanation, I got anger: "What gives you the right to question me?"
To a child, that lands like this: What I feel doesn't matter. I don't matter.
It wasn't one moment. It was a pattern. And when you grow up like that, something forms in you. Not just pain. Beliefs.
I'm not important.
I don't belong.
I have to survive this on my own.
Here's something it took me years to understand: survival didn't just hurt me. Survival trained me. It trained me to be alert when I should have been at rest. To expect disappointment before I expected love. To work, produce, provide, and figure things out, but not to receive help, trust people, or believe I could be safe.
Some of the things I called strength were actually wounds. And a lie believed long enough begins to feel like personality.
But just because something feels familiar does not mean it's who you are.
Scripture
"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me."Psalm 27:10 (NKJV)
Even when the people who were supposed to be there weren't, even when you were overlooked or left waiting at the window, God did not agree with that story about you.
Sit With This
What has survival tried to tell you about who you are? Not what you wish you believed, but what it has actually whispered to you in the dark.
One Small Step
Write down one sentence survival has said to you. Just one. Then write Psalm 27:10 underneath it. You don't have to fix anything today. Just let the truth sit next to the lie.
Go deeper: Listen to Built, Not Broken, Episode 1, "When Survival Tries to Define You" on Spotify or read the full reflection.
Next: the voices that were answering the lie long before I could hear them.