Courage. Never thought much about it before. It came up today as I was feeling a lack of some kind.
Actually, let me go back. It's been an unfolding journey.
My nineteen-year-old decided he needed an adventure so he, quite irresponsibly, left town with a friend without informing his two employers or me. Well, that's a whole story in and of itself. Basically a good kid, just a little slow growing up. But it was my reactions that I was trying to pay attention to. I was so... thrown... by his irresponsibility that I decided to look at what my own life had been like: years and years of responsibility-- big-time.
I was quite carefree and living in the smoke-filled haze of the late 60s and 70s until my future wife became pregnant. I was nineteen (ah, just connected the age thing). Anyways, I quit partying and turned myself into the responsible family man-- to the hilt. Five children later, my identity was completely set-- take care of others, work hard, do what it takes, take care of everyone else. Certainly, not all bad stuff.
But along the way, I lost something. I lost something of the adventure of life. I turned myself into a near robot and lost the ability to fully engage with life at times. I lost some of myself in the process of settling into the routines of life.
I'm not suggesting that I, or anyone else, should do what my nineteen-year-old did. I think we call that a mid-life crisis at my age. But I am suggesting that, sometimes, it does us all a good to shake up our hearts a bit and say-- hey-- are you still alive? Are you still beating? Do you have a longing for an adventure or two or have you settled into the mundane so thoroughly that not even God is able to stir up the embers of passion?
So... this is the background to what was stirring in my heart today. I realized that it's not the adventure itself that I need, as much as I need to know that I have courage-- the courage to step out, the courage to go for it, the courage to be fully alive, and the courage to press deeply into God's will come what may.
When I'm stripped of courage then the adventure of life is already lost. There is nothing in me that has the confidence or spark to really go after life. I'm just settling in. I become the routine that I'm living. There's no life apart from the no-life that my life has become. There's no possibility of anything else, because there's no courage to move me beyond it even if there was possibilities.
So, I began to think about how little courage I feel.
I didn't grow up in the safest of environments, so fear was far more the norm than courage. It was rare to feel courageous. Oh, I might put on the bravado. I can be "macho" when I need to. I learned many, many ways to compensate: to be smarter, to achieve more, but deep inside I felt far from courageous.
I'm rambling here, but I certainly believe that this is a common malady today. We have become stripped of courage and therefore there is no real umph behind anything that we are doing. We are people who do not feel courageous. Therefore we become people who feel trapped knowing, deep inside, that we don't have the courage to live any other way.
So, I began to take my own lack of courage to my Father. "Heal the wounds and fears. Restore to my heart the type of courage it is meant to feel."
It was here that the sweetest thing happened. He began to show me my courage. He began to point out many, many incidences throughout my life in which I acted with great courage. Not fighting bullies or being "a man's man," but stepping out, taking that risk, moving on when it was time to move on, standing up for myself when it was right, taking the step of faith when it was hard to do. God wasn't trying to impress me with myself, rather He was allowing me to begin to feel the courage that He has already placed in my heart. Just as we need to feel loved, I believe we also need to feel courageous-- to feel our own courage. We are made in the image of God-- the image of One who is courageous beyond our understanding. It's not pride to take courage. It's to walk in who we are. Courage doesn't mean we take control and bully. It means that we walk in humility and obedience to the will of the Father-- courageously and outrageously. It is something that is very internal and very powerful.
Courage is more than facing our fears and doing it anyway. Courage, I believe, is feeling the strength of who we are in God and walking in that. It's feeling something other than fear, or in addition to fear. It's feeling something of who we are-- it's a being shift-- it's a self-identity perspective that says "I am someone." Courage is becoming grounded in the soil of our identity.
I am continuing to reflect on courage!
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