The Reality Behind the Glamour – Part Two

When I left off on my last post, Samajé had been cut from the Redskins and subsequently signed by the Bengals, and I had made the move to Cincinnati (or, technically, Kentucky, right across the river). We got the house unpacked, and it began to feel like home. We started going to the team Bible study, and I made friends with many women in the organization. I got a feel for the stadium and figured out how to manage game days with a 6-month-old. 

One day, about four weeks after we moved in, I went to run some errands. When I got home early in the afternoon, Maj was already home. It was supposed to be his long workday, so I commented something along those lines, and he responded with, “I got cut.”  

Now, when he got released from the Redskins, we were more or less expecting it. This, however, caught me by surprise. Maj wasn’t quite as shocked as I was – when I bought Bengals T-shirts and clothes with his new number on them a couple weeks before, he reminded me that this isn’t college. He knew how the business works. I did too, of course, but I naively thought that since the Bengals had claimed him, surely they would keep him throughout the season. 

As luck would have it, the team needed space to replace injured defensive players on the 53-man roster, and unfortunately, they decided to make that space by letting Samajé go. 

From this point, we had another 24-hour waiting period in which other teams could claim him to their roster, but this time, that did not happen. Maj’s agent began to discuss practice squads with teams once again. Many of the same teams that were interested before were still interested, but so were the Bengals. It seemed as though the team intended to bring him back up to their roster as soon as they could, and we were already settled in the area, so Maj ended up signing with the Bengals’ practice squad the next day. 

In the past, facing this type of unexpected change would have floored me. Our family’s income was immediately cut to 20% of what it had been, which, although it still a good living, made our two-home budget a little tighter. More importantly, and in a way more daunting, the fact loomed that he could be signed by another team at any given moment. (While he could not sign to another practice squad after signing to the Bengals’, any team could sign him to their roster.) 

Any of you who have read my past blog post about my struggle with anxiety and depression can probably guess that stress like this creates the prime opportunity for anxiety to creep in. From the moment Maj told me he got cut, though, I never really experienced it. There were no panic attacks; no tears were shed. Instead, I felt this overwhelming and unexplainable sense of peace. 

I was quickly reminded of a verse we had gone over in Bible study just a couple weeks prior: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7). 

Y’all. As soon as that verse came to mind, I realized that was exactly what I was experiencing. I was prepared for this. The Lord was guarding my heart and mind and providing me with a peace that only He could. While this turn of events was not the best news we could have gotten, it made me realize that we are in His hands. 

Nine weeks later, Maj is still on the Bengals’ practice squad. We were hopeful that he would have been brought back up to the roster by now, but that hasn’t been God’s plan for us. He could still get picked up at any point, but for now, we are practicing contentment and gratitude for where we are right now as we finish out the season here in Cincinnati. As we have now come to realize, we just have to take this crazy journey one step at a time. 

<3 Meg