Finding Courage

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the 

judgement that something is more important than fear." 

~ Ambrose Redmoon

It takes a lot of courage to get through life. Nobody goes through life without facing major life-changing events. A loved one dies. You lose your job. Your marriage is dissolving. A pregnancy comes at an inopportune time. You experience violence. You're in a terrible accident and are injured. A fire claims your home and all your belongings.

The creeping cold of fear settles in your chest and you freeze from the inside out. You're numbed; the question "What the hell do I do now?" echoes in your skull. 

And you don't know what the answer is. You just don't know.

You might pray. You might turn to others for advice, perhaps you sit and read self-help books and articles—like this one—to try to find a way to haul your wounded self up and keep going.

That takes courage.

Most people envision courage as exemplified by a hero in a movie getting up at the last second—when it looks like his end is imminent—and finding a huge surge of energy to complete his task with an awe-inspiring calm and clearheadedness. On top of that, the hero comes up with a fantastically clever way of escaping unscathed and saving everyone with panache.

That's spectacular movie fodder, but it has no application to real life. In real life, we often get beaten. We don't save the day. We don't win.

When my mother died, it was up to my brother and I to clean out our beautiful family home of 30 years and get it ready to sell. I had hoped to inherit it—my mom had always told me that it'd be mine. It was a peaceful home with a little creek out back and a garden full of rhododendrons that would bloom so beautifully in the spring along with the cherry trees. I loved that home intensely.

But my mother had left us with 15 judgements against her estate that had to be paid off. If we didn't sell the home, the creditors would descend like vultures and tear it apart, leaving us with nothing from the sale. There was no escape. 

Ultimately, I had not only lost my mom, but my home as well. I felt like Freddy Krueger had come with his horrible claw and taken me to his nightmare. 

I still had to get myself back up, go to work every day and pay my bills while I was losing everything dear to me. I felt crippled by fear. 

But that's where Redmoon’s "judgement that something is more important than fear" comes in. In that heavy defeat, I had to deem something was more important than the fear, the despair, and the sadness in order to find the courage to keep going. 

For me, that was deciding that I would have a home of my own. I couldn't have my beloved family home, but I could make a beloved family home. I could rebuild family back in the face of loss.

We sold the home, paid off the debts, and processed the grief. The situation wasn't easy or graceful. It was like being walking wounded for a long time. It went really slowly. What kept me going was my dreams and working on them. Doing that brought me light in the darkness—and hope out of the sorrow.

I met my husband around that time. He helped me through a lot, and I am happy to report that we'll be buying our home this summer. 

So that's the key to courage. When you're afraid and feel like you can't do what you need to, start thinking about things you really want to do in your life. That's what is more important than fear and where you will find your courage.

Photography by BJWOK