This morning, I did something a little different, something a little more deliberate. I made space for it. I sat with it. I felt it. I said aloud, “Feel the fear, Michael. Stay here. Feel the vulnerability. Stay here.” Etc. This went on for about 20 minutes or so before I woke up, practiced gratitude, waited for my water to warm. The anxiety passed. Is that courage? Or is it stupidity? What separates courage from stupidity? Sometimes I feel stupid for pressing on with things that aren’t working as quickly as I would like for them to work.

What does it mean to have courage?

We have always valued courage. We notice it when we see it. We recognize it because something within us sees in their distant, external image something that we want to be able to do. We want to be able to replicate it. Human courage is part of that moral beauty that gives way to awe. People enduring suffering, overcoming odds, lasting through to the end of a journey. We want to be with them in that struggle because they came through.

What we fail to remember, however, is that they didn’t know they could endure to the end. They just knew they had the present moment, and they focused on what they could do. We’re inspired by what they have achieved, and we’re even able to romanticize suffering, longing for the day when we can become like them. We fail to realize that the path to our own moral beauty lies through our current situation. We’ve received our orders. It’s up to us to focus on our mission.

Another thing that we’re prone to do is wish that our difficulties were different. Maybe we even find ourselves saying, “I wish their struggle was mine.” We think that ours are so much more difficult than theirs. Suffering strikes us all in the face. What they endured struck them with the power that ours are striking us. It stings, it burdens, tortures. Suffering fills the vacuum of our humanity like a gas filling a chamber. It fills our entire being so that we wake with it, live with it, go to sleep with it. Suffering renews its cup every morning.

Courage is the antidote for suffering. Courage calls on our name to come forward into our life and bathe ourselves in suffering’s pool willingly even though we cannot escape it. Courage simply says, “You have a choice to face it willingly or unwillingly.” The choice divides the courageous from the cowards. Brave is probably not appropriate here. Courage finds us in our heart gathering resources we never knew we had from storehouses we didn’t know existed to live in a freedom we could not have dreamed of. Courage leads us through the middle of our suffering to the Promised Land. A cloud by day; a pillar of fire by night. We think back to our time of enslavement with longing. Food came to us every day. The cities we slaved away in were easily recognizable, familiar. Sure, life was hard, but we knew what was coming. Here the terrain changes with each step. We rely on our food from unknown storehouses in the sky. We follow a map we cannot read. Courage keeps us going.

We will have a moment when we see the Promised Land. Will we believe that it is ours for the taking? Or will we see the strength of the people, let our hearts melt in fear, distrust that we’ve been given everything we need to face the enemy?

I woke this morning to face my fears all over again. Suffering renewed its cup for me this morning. I drank it all. It was a bitter draught. I’m moving on.

Will you join me?

On courage

Rip current

On keeping one beautiful thing in mind