What happened to your courage?

To be entirely honest, I wasn’t going to write this week.

After traveling to England, Wales and the latest, Miami (…I know, random…) And after scrambling to finish an extreeeeemely vulnerable article for Newspring Church this week, I was certain I had ZERO energy or honesty left. But surprise, surprise… here I am.

But to clarify, this is more of a journal entry than a blog post. (Which is code for: I wrote this last night and didn’t edit it.)

 

One day, when I was in London (which was lovvvvvely by the way) I caught myself staring at a woman boarding the train. There I sat, awkwardly staring at her for who-knows-how-long, while she pushed her child’s stroller to an available seat.

She actually lives here, I caught myself thinking.

…How brave… How adventurous… I went on to wonder (until the awkward moment when our eyes met, and I was forced to acknowledge what a creeper I looked like.)

But in that moment, God so clearly spoke to my heart,

“Remember when people used to say that about you?”

…Remember when nearly everyday living in NYC, tourists would gawk at you like you were an exhibit at the zoo. Watching, as you carried your 2 ½ year old (and the stroller) up and down 11 flights of stairs to get to the train, so that you could get to church on Sunday?

…Remember when you gave up ‘The American Dream’ — and sold your house, your two cars, and everything but your 8 pieces of furniture, for a life carrying your groceries, your toddler (and said: stroller from Satan) home, and through the snow? And how you did it gladly, because I asked you to?

“How brave…How adventurous….” God acknowledged.

“…But what happened to your courage?”

God was right — I have lost all my courage! And this week He has been revealing to me why losing our courage can be far more concerning than we realize.

In Psalm 40:12 David says, “For troubles surround me – too many to count! My sins pile up so high I can’t see my way out. They outnumber the hairs on my head. I have lost all courage.”

In this verse, David has two insurmountable troubles: 1. He has sinned ( a lot. ) 2. He has lost his courage.

Here are three simple takeaways God is speaking (so loudly) to me in this moment, it’s deafening:

#1 – Even heroic warriors like David, can lose their courage.

#2 – According to this verse, if you want to make things difficult for yourself, having no courage is second only, to having an abundance of sin in your life.

#3 – Both the presence of sin and the absence of courage are proof you aren’t relying on something greater than ourselves.

Iyanla Vanzant puts it this way, “When you are getting ready to step into a new place you should be so scared that there’s a little pee running down your leg, because that’s when you know you are depending on something greater than you — If you don’t have a little pee running down your leg, then you aren’t living big enough!”

I don’t know why you have lost your courage… In fact, I am only beginning to grasp all of the heartache and trauma that forced me to lose mine (And I sure as heck don’t understand how David, the same man who so bravely fought and defeated Goliath, lost his!)

But I can feel God fighting for me to get my courage back — To not just settle for easy and comfortable, but to instead, stay gutsy, walk boldly, love fearlessly and speak honestly.

To live in a way— whether in Anderson, SC or New York City — that people look at me like I looked at the woman on the train, and think, Woah. How does she live like that? …how does she love like that? …Heck, how does she write like that?

So brave… So adventurous… So courageous…

(Ballsy, even.)

… And with a little pee running down my leg.