Courage Dearheart and Starting From Square One
“The three little wolves managed to escape but their chinny-chin-chins were trembling and trembling and trembling.
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I am about to tell you a big secret. I want to write a book. There it is. Not exactly shocking, I’m sure, from someone who loves to write and has a blog and has too many thoughts than she knows what to do with. It’s also not a unique idea. There are millions of people who also have this goal. I am sharing this big secret because I just realized that I need to take my whole idea for a book back to the drawing board and reexamine whether or not I have the chops to write the book I have started. The topic of the book? Courage.
The idea for a larger piece of writing was sparked several years ago, soon after my dad died and we were left in a bit of an overwhelming mess. While trying to manage the waves of deep grief, we discovered that he had died without a will and his death also meant that we would need to take over the care of my aunt who was mentally disabled and mentally ill. It was quite a lot.
Several months after his passing I was making the fifteen-minute drive to my aunt’s house to check-in. It was a drive that I knew like the back of my hand. But when you're overwhelmed with fear and doubt and uncertainty, the back of your hand means nothing and the familiar starts to blur.
At one point in the drive the highway splits; one leading me straight to her part of town and the other up and over an overpass that led to a bridge that would send me miles, and at least 20 minutes out of my way. Yes, that was the lane I found myself in. Me, the strong, lucid, capable one, didn’t even notice what I had done until I was halfway over the bridge. I was suddenly jarred back to reality and the realization that what I was facing was too big for me. I was afraid.
I exited the highway and rerouted myself. As I headed back over the bridge a very surprising image popped into my head. At this point, you must have a working knowledge of the Lord of the Rings movies. Of all the scripture the Holy Spirit could have used, it was the following moment that stopped me in my emotional tracks. Not actual tracks. I did keep driving. It was the moment when Merry is on the warhorse with Eowyn. They are facing the bloodthirsty horde of Mordor and their courage is flagging. Eowyn breathes in deeply and, with a shaky voice, says, “Courage Merry. Courage for our friends.”
The thought came out of nowhere as I crossed the Queensborough Bridge over 6 years ago and I, like Eowyn, took a deep breath, nodded to myself, and made a decision to summon courage.
As the days and months trudged along after that moment on the bridge, I had to do more summoning and self-talk than I could have thought. I dug into the bible and began to highlight the verses on courage. I read and reread the epic stories where God called His people to show up to battles, sometimes with little more than torches and clay jugs. And courage. Sometimes He just called them to show up and watch Him completely win the battle. But they still had to show up.
As we made it through this challenging time we watched God do things that I could not have imagined. I began encouraging people, mostly my family, to step out in faith and a cry for biblical courage became my refrain. So much so that, after one of my daughters reminded me of the grand Narnian adventure Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I decided to get “courage dearheart” tattooed on my forearm.
So with a notebook filled with scrawled writings on courage, I began to forge ahead with a book. I even had an outline and I hate making outlines. But then the actual writing began and something went wrong. Actually, a lot of things went wrong. Without going into any specifics (maybe one day), one difficult or challenging event after another hit us like waves on a wild beach without a moment to catch our breath.
After each hit, I tried to shake my head, reorient myself and shout, “Courage!”. But the waves came so fast that I could hear my voice shrinking and getting quavy-er. Like the stubborn little mule that I can be, I kept on with the introduction of the book and had a couple of my family members read it. They were kind but noticed that it wasn’t quite working. I knew they were right and even said to them, “I’m starting to think I may not have enough understanding of courage to keep writing this book. I think I have to do a lot more learning.” Sigh. Why do I make these statements?
It was about 2 days later that my husband and I received some life-changing news. Not necessarily bad. But after a lot of waves in quick succession, it knocked me off my feet. My husband and I prayed together, said goodnight, and he fell asleep. I didn’t. I laid awake afraid. I have struggled with anxiety on and off for years. It wasn’t that. I felt full-blown fear. It was the kind of physical fear you would, likely, experience if someone was breaking into your house. I couldn’t believe how weak I felt and kept praying and reciting any bible verses I could think of. And then I remembered the statement that I had made just a few days earlier. Ok, Lord. Here we go. I’m ready to actually start over.
Of course, courage is not something that you learn once and then you’re good to go. We just have to read the story of Elijah to be reminded of that. But, after a couple of weeks of self-examination and loads of prayer, I am realizing that to lay a solid foundation of biblical courage I need to focus more on the reason for my courage. While I was spending a lot of time quoting the last verse of Psalm 27, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” I wasn’t contemplating the first verse of that Psalm, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
Instead of running ahead with self-fueled determination, digging into my relationship with the Lord, and meditating on His character are critical for me to proceed. The more I look into biblical courage, the more I realize that it is all-encompassing as this quote reminded me: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” C.S. Lewis.
So, oddly, I am ending this blog with the beginning of something that I hope will become deep and real and lasting.
