Sunday’s Art of Truth
Courage & The Red Sweater
In my early to late teens, I always wore a sweater. It didn’t matter if it was 100 degrees outside, you would not see me without a sweater. This is still true today. Now, it is for different reasons. However back in the day, I wore it because it was familiar. It was a cloak that covered my body and my hidden places. One in particular was red, and mind you, it was UGLY. I knew, in partial measure who I was in that sweater. I was hidden. I was comforted. It concealed me. It covered my insecurities and my lack of self. I was the awkward girl in the tattered red sweater. That’s who I was.
As I look back at my need for that red sweater, I recognize now that it was my own expression of courage. I was armed with the only thing I could control, that red sweater. I felt naked without it. Ugly, invisible, a non-person, a commodity. My body, my mind and my personality were not my own. I was owned by everything around me. For some reason, no one bothered my red sweater. A tiny miracle, I think. I wore it day in and day out.
One of my favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt- “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ Often, we must do the thing we think we cannot do.
Courage is a big concept, huge and personal. Sometimes, courage is about getting out of bed every day. Bravery can be about facing a hard thing. It can be about standing up for yourself, even when it means you find yourself standing alone. Sometimes that happens. Other times, courage is about standing up on your own and declaring your own truth place. Listening to the YOU inside of you. Yes, the one He preserved. The one He created when you were conceived. Frequently, it is about figuring out who you are, what you stand for and what you will sacrifice. Courage is also about going against the norm or the ‘status quo’. We all have heard or read the all too familiar quote, “Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’. Yes, sometimes courage is the ending of one day passing into the hope of a new day.
I have learned that our definition of courage also changes over time as we move from one life event or one stage of growing and healing to another.
My whole life has been about learning and living courage. Surely, it was courageous to hope, to dream, to believe in a life different than what I knew. For 28 years, by God’s grace, perceivable, poignant action has been put to my journey of courage as I have faced every demon that presented itself to me. Every memory, every secret and dark thing. Each intersection was about a choice. “A known hell is better than an unknown heaven”. For years, that was my reality. Always on the ledge, ready to leap. Do I hold on to what I know, even if it is painful and not good for me?
I was pondering the many faces of courage I have worn over my lifetime. Life and death courage. Deep grieving courage. Doing ‘new’ things courage. Standing up for myself courage. Using my voice courage. Standing alone courage. Introspective courage. Who am I? What do I want now that I am healed? What do I believe? What do I want to impact? Where am I going?
It takes courage to do the work to find out who you were born to be. We have the ‘we’ that others define as ‘us’. We have the ‘should’s’ that tell us who we should be. We have the wants and wishes of who we want to be. Reality is that this life’s journey, every piece of it, leads us to our courage. It is not just courage that gets us through, it is courage that keeps us. We have journeys that intersect with others and they can parallel our own. Our journeys are unique because they are guided by our Creator. It takes great courage to step off the beaten path, even if it is a road less traveled. It takes daring to determine that we are going to pursue our personal healing truth. It may look quite different from others, but that is the beauty of it. Unique & personal and full of grace for the doing.
Recovery and healing for me has been about having courage. Taking off the Red Sweater. Taking off the protections. Shedding the should’s, what ifs, and embracing who He created me to be. Not ‘just’ courage to face the darkness but courage to find myself. Thankfully, Jesus is my partner, my Father, my strength. He has become my inner voice.
No matter what courage means to you or the varied faces it may have, we all find ourselves reckoning with it. We must. We must also honor the ways in which we have been courageous.
I pray that this reading finds you in a place of honoring your courage, whatever that looks like.
If I could pick the badge that most represented my life and journey, I would pick courage.
Blessings until we meet again- Beloved Reborn