We believe that courage and fearlessness will arrive before we do something; that it is an actual muscle like thing that comes crawling into our body and boom, we now have courage.
But courage isn't like that, nor is being fearless.
Courage is knowing you are in fear and shaking and trembling and feeling like a small child could push you over, and you keep going.
Courage and strength doesn't arrive first. It actually settles into you after you faced your biggest fears, said what you thought you could never say, do what you felt was impossible to happen. It comes After.
Which seems like that is backwards, but courage comes afterward, for you look back at what you actually did. What you said and how you didn't die....or faint or whatever, You did it.
It is the act of doing what you don't feel you have the strength or the courage to do...But you do it anyway....that's when you see this psyche muscle there...courage.
It isn't like love....it arrives after you need it. It is like a cheerleader waiting on the other side of the river of turmoil and waiting to embrace you....it doesn't carry you across.
I am thinking codependency carries....courage waits and cheers, beckoning you to be brave, to walk with shaky legs, to talk through tears and sobs....that is courage.
Courage doesn't look like we may have it pictured, like it is strong and calm and wise and cool looking, and all put together.
For me, courage was swear words and jagged sobs, it was putting up hands when my mother came to hug, after being silently away for 5 months after her husband was exposed as being a pedophile.
Courage was saying no.
Courage for me was walking into her home, reigning in my rage to the point of ONLY hollering and not pummeling her. Courage was saying what I had to say to ears that were unable to hear or be empathetic.
Courage had me walking out, knowing that she couldn't mother me...courage was mothering me myself.
Courage was sitting on a path not knowing where it led, but going anyway. Courage was to be without a plan and being okay.
Courage was accepting what is, when it turned my belly into heaving sobs.
Courage wasn't pretty or perfect, it wasn't calm and peaceful, but raw ugliness at times...that looking back were beautifully represented in their honesty.
Courage is doing what you have never done before to get to a place you have no idea that you need to go.
Courage is blindly living on a pinhead of time, where nothing is familiar and no one is ahead of you...it is you and the time ticking in your life.
Courage is surrendering the pattern you have followed to strike out on your own, creating as you go; one shakey step at a time.
Courage beckons and you say yes...in the exact condition you are in. It like God, and only accepts originality. It only wants you just as you are in this moment of time. You are perfectly perfect....it waits...go toward it...it is on the other side of what ever you feel is impossible...just head in and know you are not alone. Courage is watching, cheering and knows you can.
