Courage

COURAGE, my metaphorical backbone, helps me to love others, challenges me to live deeply. Where, what is it? It’s hidden reserves of raw strength coupled with the desire for what is good and right and it is a reserve that exists deep within my heart, mind, spirit, will, and soul. 

It is an inner reserve I share with all people. 

This unification of my inner-being (heart, mind, will, spirit, soul) helps me stand up on the inside and on the outside. 

It’s fuel, stored within, providing me with the boost I need to encounter life’s tougher hurdles.

If, in humility, I tap into, and deploy my courage, it miraculously self-replenishes, grows, shifts, multiplies, plays its part in transforming me. 

Blind courage – which is perhaps not courage at all – can be dangerous. Authentic courage is designed for use in concert with my thinking, and planning, my education, desires, wants, and wisdom. 

My courage helps overcome obstacles birthed in fear, insecurity, and failure. Living, (extra)ordinary daily living, takes courage. Quiet moments of reflection, coupled with brave living, refills my supply of courage. Courage cross-empowers, it joins forces with generosity, kindness, forbearance, and patience to empower me to face the most challenging circumstances. 

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Deep down where soul, spirit, heart, mind, and my will, meet, I have a magnificent gift – the instinctual, God-given, desire for intimacy. Togetherness. It comes with my humanity. 

I want to be intimate, to belong, to be part of a family, groups, teams. 

I don’t want to be alone. I want to know others and be known by others. 

This desire whispers, sometimes shouts, for recognition, especially when my equally powerful instinctual desire for autonomy has enjoyed its pleasures. 

I want to be heard and treasured as a companion and friend. I want to be an integral part of the lives of close family and friends. I want to be fearlessly open with a handful of loving friends and for them to be equally open with me. 

If I repeatedly ignore this primal, instinctual, inborn urge, this beautiful part of me, I place my emotional well-being and physical health at risk for I was ot designed to be alone. 

This beautiful gift, integral to my humanity, is inextricably part of who I am. 

Acknowledging it, respecting it, enjoying it, enhances my capacity to love myself, love others, and become fully, beautifully, more human. 

Turning over a new leaf, starting over, going back to basics, clearing the slate, I am sure there are a few more terms and metaphors I am  missing for re-starts. 

While noble, and may be very necessary, it is not that easy. 

Homeostasis can kick up quite a fuss. 

Old habits and attitudes and behaviors resist change. It is as if they refuse to believe the hosts (you, me, whoever want to make a change) are serious about the shifts or the new starts we may want to make.

I have found it best to start quietly and silently and with hidden resolve. 

The more that’s announced, the greater the expectations are to see results. 

Go carefully and quietly into your new behaviors. Exercise them very privately for a period of time. 

Offer no fanfare. 

Fanfares will set you up for failure. 

Let people notice, without you telling them, whatever difference you are trying to make. 

Battling old ways and routines, and for some, addictions, may indeed require support and so I encourage the one who seeks such change or freedom, find help but find it privately.

Change is possible – it is just not as easy as people sometimes think it is.     

A boundary is a line (usually invisible, sometimes literal) that separates a person from all other people. Each person is responsible for the wellness of his or her own boundaries.

Indications of poor or troubled boundaries: Sharing too much personal information too soon with someone you hardly know. Falling in love quickly – for some, instantly – and with anyone who reaches out. Being preoccupied – can’t get him/her out of my head – with someone. Going against your values to please or attract someone. Hoping someone you meet will have poor boundaries. Accepting food, gifts, touch, or sex you do not want. Taking for the sake of getting; giving for the sake of giving. Letting someone be in charge of your life. Allowing someone else to say what you feel and see. Believing someone can, and should, anticipate your needs. Being moody and withdrawn to get attention. Walking out to see if anyone follows – or even cares. Expecting people to read your mind and know what you want or need. Habitually stealing the agenda, taking center stage, occupying the spotlight. Falling apart to get care and attention. Eating for destructive reasons or with destructive results. Sex for pain, aggression, or retribution. 

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Fataf makes me smile – mostly because he is so innocent, or appears to be. 

I met him in Togo.

He made me hot chocolate. 

There are not too many people who have taken me for a ride on a motorcycle. 

He is one of them. 

There is no one else with whom I have the exact same shirt — well, almost. Mine has short sleeves while his shirt is more formal, long sleeves – but yes, we have the same shirt, made by the same tailor on the same day. There are not too many people who have made me a hot chocolate drink on a warm night in west Africa. Fataf is one of the two such people.

He’s a warm and friendly human. I think he loves people. It seems to me he understands what it means to hear and obey God, or at least he is learning.

What makes me smile is that young men and women who want to hear and listen to God are so keen to hear and listen to God that the keenness often blocks their ears and blinds their eyes. 

They seem to want God to speak in some unusual way – so they will really KNOW it is God. 

It is easy, I suppose, to forget that God is always speaking and speaking through the ordinary, the things we miss or see so often that it’s easy to not see. If a man walks past the most beautiful tree in the world at the same time every day he may stop really seeing it after a week or so. 

Some people live so close to the ocean they stop admiring it. 

Maybe even Beethoven’s family got tired of hearing him play the piano. 

God is speaking loudly and sweetly with every sunset, every laughing child.

God is speaking through a cup of hot chocolate made with love on a warm west-African night for a stranger who came on a plane from a far-off land to do more than drink a warm drink and nag for Internet access.

Sometimes a cup of hot chocolate is as powerful among those who believe as bread broken and wine, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of rebellion.

“This is my Body, the Body of Christ.” 

God is speaking.

Always.