Courage

Courage is a thing that I sometimes have, and well I sometimes haven't. And I know that was bad grammar. Some days I have the courage to try things that by all sets and standards our culture says, "How dare you." Like living in a non-electric cabin for 18 months, bathing in a converted horse trough, talking to ballroom students while peeing in my outhouse, watching my husband gun down a flogging rooster. You know, courage, the kind you get when you decide to birth a child with absolutely no drugs, and heck-why-not-no-hospital-either. I had the privilege of birthing both of my children at home. Rebekah took 54 hours. Ouch. Luke took two and a half. Ouch. Courage. That something that rises up in you that says, "I'm going back to school. Period. I don't care if it kills me." And here I find myself in graduate school, dad-blame it, and will graduate at the end of next year. The end of next year was comin' anyways.
Courage. The thing that allows you to go against the grain. To move into a 100 year old farmhouse with falling down window shutters, terrible landscaping, one nasty bathroom, and a huge hole in the kitchen floor while you are simultaneously seriously pregnant, toting around a precocious two year old. (Before we tore the thing out I could pee and spit in the sink at the same time.)
Courage. To live among the renovations.
One year later and by golly we did it. The year went by anyways. Why not.
Courage.

Eleanor Roosevelt says, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
Courage.
Courage to start a business with no money. Courage to believe God is in the revealing. The day by day unfolding of His will for us. And not a day, or an hour sooner.
Wonder why.
Maybe it's because He is teaching us courage.
I wrote a poem once in the midst of great trial, of terrible heartache, yet I could feel the heartbeat of the Creator as He walked with me in my pain. Here it goes, this one's for you, and me.
"This flower represents HOPE. Hope that I will have the COURAGE to live. Hope that I will remain seen...noticed. Hope that before I die, I will mean something to somebody. Hope that if I am trampled on, I will leave a scent of LOVE and FORGIVENESS. Hope that my life will make a difference among so many lives. Hope that each day will represent a different color, a different shade of GRACE. Hope that I will bear seeds that produce flowers who are beautiful, strong, and always know where the original seed came from. Hope that when it is time for me to fade, that I will fade with grace. And when it is time for me to die, that I will WORSHIP." --Stacy Jagger

Today I wish for you COURAGE. Strength to try. For the best way out, is always THROUGH...