On the Other Side of Scared

Ted Lasso Season 4 is in full swing. And I’ve been utterly captivated, just as I was in the first 3 seasons. There is something about this show that makes me walk away enamored with humanity—faults and all.

In this most recent episode, one of the female Richmond soccer stars, Gemma, sustains a potentially serious injury. This particularly struck Coach Alice hard. As we get bits and pieces of Coach Alice’s story throughout the season, we learn that her soccer career ended because of injuries. While awaiting the full prognosis for Gemma’s knee injury, she tells Coach Alice she plans to stick with law school rather than trying to rehabilitate her knee and return to the field. Coach Alice later comes back to Gemma and challenges her. And in an absolutely beautiful monologue, Coach Alice says that if Gemma genuinely wants to do law school, she should. But if she’s choosing to give up soccer because she is scared, then she should think again. Because, “... on the other side of you being scared is you being free.”

I genuinely got goosebumps, and they've stayed, as I rewatched Coach Alice’s monologue several times.

What a spectacularly convicting thing to say.

Because I can think of very few things in my life where I experienced the full bliss of freedom that didn’t come from first sitting with fear.

Several career jumps later in my life, I’ve found each one to bring me more joy, contentment, and freedom than the one before it. But leaving a career field I knew and felt comfortable in was far from easy, and it brought much fear and uncertainty.

Embracing and growing as a mother every day leads to moments of beautiful, soul-satisfying freedom. But I can’t think of a moment in those experiences that wasn't first met with a wealth of fear and uncertainty about potentially failing my boys in a multitude of ways.

I don’t think I will ever find fear an easy emotion to sit with. In fact, the emotion itself makes more things in my life more difficult; I question myself persistently, and I have to think harder to do what are usually simple things. But what a beautiful, convicting reminder. That sometimes, by sitting with all that discomfort and the challenges fear and being scared can bring, we may find the astonishing, breathtaking experience of freedom.