The Middle Is Never Trendy

What no one tells you about the messy stretch between starting and arriving.

I wish I could tell you Breaking Barriers started with one brave moment and a beautiful plan.

It didn’t.

The idea sat with me for six months before I did anything with it. I was afraid. Afraid of being judged. Afraid people would look at me and wonder what was so special about me that I thought I was an authority on leadership. Who was I to start a podcast and share my experiences as though I had something important to say?

Then one evening, I was sitting on my patio with a pour of my favorite bourbon. I was at a low point professionally, and my oldest son was sitting with me.

He developed epilepsy when he was 14. I still remember how hopeless I felt when it happened. Over the years, I have watched fear make him hesitate to put himself out there. That night, it made me mad. Not at him, but at the fear that continued to hold him back.

I have always told my sons to be fearless. Who cares what other people think? If you put your mind to something, you can do it. You can find success even when you have no idea what that success will look like in the end.

Then it hit me.

I was being a hypocrite.

I was frustrated that fear was holding my son back while I had allowed fear to keep Breaking Barriers sitting in my head for six months.

I went to my tribe, the women I trust, and told them, “I want to do this, but I have no idea where to start.”

They rallied around me.

That was the beginning, and beginnings make us feel brave. We celebrate them because they are filled with excitement and possibility. We celebrate endings too because we can see the accomplishment. We like the feeling of success and the satisfaction of knowing we made it.

But we rarely talk about or celebrate the stretch between the two.

That is where I am now.

I am no longer standing at the beginning of Breaking Barriers, but I have not arrived either. I am somewhere in between, and the middle has been far less glamorous than the launch.

One of my biggest frustrations has been learning all the technology required to make this successful. Building the website was slow. I wanted to do everything correctly, and I was determined to learn how to do it myself.

If I am completely honest, part of me wanted to be able to say, “I did this. I built all of it.”

So I kept working.

For weeks, I worked on the website until one or two o’clock in the morning. I would run Rainey all day, carrying the responsibility of making major decisions, and then work nonstop after hours to make Breaking Barriers happen.

I was pouring my heart and soul into it. One hundred percent of me.

I was also exhausted.

One day, I was sitting in my office working when I suddenly broke down in tears. There were so many things I wanted to do and so many things I was already carrying that I could not allow to slip.

At the end of the day, I had nothing left.

Dave found me that way. He knows me well enough to know that I am stubborn, especially when I am determined to accomplish something. He planned a staycation and told me not to bring my laptop or my iPad.

That weekend became the reset I had not given myself permission to take.

Not long afterward, I sat in the audience at EmpowHER and watched Leslie stand onstage during her keynote and cry. She apologized to her daughter because she believed she had failed at her TEDx talk. Her daughter hugged her, told her it would be okay, and reminded her that she had not failed her.

I understood those tears.

It was the raw emotion of an overachiever who believed she had disappointed someone she loved. I may not have been standing on a stage, but I had cried those same tears in my office when Dave found me.

Overachievers have a way of believing the answer is always to work harder. If something is not going right, we push harder. If we are exhausted, we keep going. If we are uncertain, we hide it because we do not want anyone to think we cannot handle what we started.

That is the truth about the middle.

The middle is where the excitement wears off and the light at the end of the tunnel is still faint. You know progress is happening, but sometimes you cannot see it.

You start asking yourself questions.

Does this matter?

Am I making my life harder?

Is what I am building meaningful?

Am I becoming the woman capable of handling what I have asked God to give me?

The middle is where lessons are learned, mistakes are made, and plans are changed. It is where confidence has to become discipline because inspiration is no longer enough. It is where you learn to correct yourself without doubting who you are or questioning your purpose.

It is also where faith becomes more than excitement. Faith becomes continuing without visible proof that you will succeed.

My dad always said our experiences build character. I believe the middle is where our character catches up with our purpose.

Still, it is easy to misunderstand what is happening here. Silence can make us believe nobody cares or is paying attention. Slow progress can make us doubt our direction. Exhaustion can make us believe we are failing.

Then we look at someone else’s finished product and convince ourselves that we are behind.

I have to remind myself that unfinished is not the same as unsuccessful.

The middle may not be trendy, but I believe it is sacred.

God develops things in us that cannot be built through applause.

My roots have grown deeper during this process. I have learned new skills and built stronger systems. I have also learned that I do not have to prove my commitment by working myself to exhaustion.

Rest does not mean I have stopped believing in what I am building. Sometimes rest is what allows me to keep carrying it without losing myself in the process.

When I listen to people talk about what they are going through, I sometimes wonder if they are not stuck at all.

Maybe, just maybe, they are simply in the middle.

If that is where you are, keep showing up. Correct what needs to change. Ask for help when you do not know what to do next. Let the people who love you take away the laptop when necessary. Rest when your body asks you to rest.

The middle may include tears, frustration, fear, and moments when you wonder whether any of it is worth it.

It may never be trendy.

But it is where almost everything worth becoming is built.

Coffee Question

What part of your life feels unfinished right now, and what would change if you stopped treating “unfinished” as “failing”?