The Little Girl and the Record Player

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…” – Joel 2:25 (ESV)

5th Birthday little Kimberly

There’s a girl I’ve kept hidden most of my life. She’s not loud. She doesn’t throw tantrums or demand attention. She learned early how to be invisible — how to curl herself up tight and tuck away her needs like folded laundry in a drawer no one ever opens.

She lived in a room at the end of the hall — a space small enough to keep the world out, but big enough to house her dreams. There was a white record player in the corner, spinning stories she could float inside when reality was too loud to bear. While other children played outside or laughed at dinner tables, she stayed curled up on the carpet, letting music become her comforter, her shield.

Outside those walls, there was chaos — loud voices, unpredictable energies, and an unspoken pressure to perform, to behave, to never need too much. Inside that room, she found silence. Safety. But also… loneliness.

She was always waiting — for someone to open the door and say, “You’re seen. You matter. Come out now. You’re safe.” But no one ever did.

So she stayed there.

I didn’t realize until recently how long she had been waiting for me.

Not a parent. Not a partner. Not a man. Me.

Fifty-year-old me — the woman who has lived through divorce, motherhood, ministry, betrayal, reawakening, and now… revelation. She waited through it all, hoping I would one day circle back. That I’d remember where I left her.

And I have.

I found her again in the places I once ran from — in the aches I kept medicated with approval, relationships, and perfection. I found her in the quiet, when I stopped moving fast enough to silence her cries. I found her in the words I began writing — not for anyone else, but for me. For us.

She was still sitting on that shag carpet in front of her record player, clutching her favorite stuffed animal, and hoping someone would notice the sadness behind her eyes.

I walked in quietly, knelt beside her, and whispered: "I’m so sorry I left you here."

She didn’t cry. She didn’t ask why. She just reached for my hand, and we sat in the silence that knew us both so well.

The healing didn’t come from a dramatic moment. It came from the gentleness. The recognition. The reunion. And the promise I made that day: "You don’t ever have to hide again."

For decades, I’ve carried the wound of abandonment. It shaped everything — how I loved, how I led, how I chased purpose. I thought if I was good enough, smart enough, desirable enough, someone would finally choose me, stay for me, love me fully.

But healing taught me that the first person who needed to choose me… was me.

I’ve spent so much of my life playing the background in someone else’s story. I’ve watered down my voice, shrunk my needs, overextended my kindness, and built entire homes out of hope and unmet potential — just for someone else to abandon them.

But no more.

The little girl with the record player is no longer a memory I run from. She’s my co-writer now. She helps me choose what’s next. She reminds me of what I deserve. And every time I try to run back to the old patterns — of proving, performing, or pleasing — she tugs on my sleeve and asks, “Please don’t leave me again.”

And I don’t.

I play the music louder now. I dance in the room she once sat frozen in. I write stories that she would have loved to read. I speak truth over her that no one else did. And I love her — fiercely, daily, wholly.

We are no longer fragments. We are one.