What is courage? It cannot be merely the opposite of fear. I have experienced a lack of fear for most of my life, and it has come to me lately that I have felt like a fearless person only because I had every opportunity to be unafraid. I had a comfortable, relatively stable home with two parents who never once threatened divorce in my presence. I had their love and fairly consistent discipline. I had a mother who seldom demonstrated fear, or at least anything I could recognize as fear. In other words, I was the daughter of a strong woman, and it came naturally to be strong. I had brothers with whom to share adventures. My talents and strengths were developed, and I rarely stepped outside them beyond an occasional foray into mathematics, which was only a challenge because it wasn't my favorite subject. I attempted things I thought were difficult, but truth be told, life was so easy. I think I often pretended to be stretching toward the limits of my abilities, but it was false humility, which is the most cowardly form of pride. My home and family were solid; my whole life seemed a constant. I felt brave. I felt strong because I had never been broken.
Now, as I look ahead to the years of my adulthood, I am drawn almost irresistibly toward adventures and challenges, the like of which I have not yet encountered. In contemplating the course of my life, I have finally been forced to ask the question, "Am I able?" So is it courage to choose a course in which I may answer, "Yes," and then to excel in that course? Or is it courage to choose what is beyond me and answer instead, "No, but I trust I will be made able when the time comes"?
I have not struggled with my own smallness or even recognized it so much at any other point in my life. Will I choose a life my size? Anyone who knows me knows the answer: Of course not! But what will become of me when I choose the life I know I must choose sooner or later? Will I be supported, or will the ground fall out from under me? Will I find courage, or will I find myself huddled in a corner weeping and completely overcome in the face of battle?
I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I think courage comes when we decide we don't have to know. I'm not talking of recklessness - of pursuing a path for which we are ill-equipped when we are meant to pursue a different one. Rather, I think courage demands that we lay aside our need to know what comes next and to know that we can handle it. Perhaps courage is less in our strength and more in admitting our weakness and agreeing to do what cannot be done. Perhaps courage is not finding the power within ourselves, as so much of our culture would have us believe, and more in trusting the Power that is beyond us and above everything.
I welcome your thoughts.
