On Being Brave

A School Assignment

My sixth grade son, Daniel, came home with a school assignment to work on over the weekend. He was asked to find a “family artifact” that told something about our family’s history. I suggested that we look through some old photos and see if any of those interested him.

He chose this wonderful photo of my grandmother.

Part of his assignment involved writing about the significance of this “family artifact” and what it tells about our family’s history.

I suggested that we call my father (that is his mother in the photo) and ask him about the picture.

Daniel learned that this photo was taken in 1937, soon after my father’s parents had married. The log cabin that my grandmother is climbing was where her husband, my grandfather, was born and raised! I’m sure that my grandfather wanted to show his new wife where he had grown up.

This little cabin was in Arkansas, in an area that is now a State Park, Petit Jean Mountain. If you click on the link, you will see how gorgeous this area is. Breathtaking, really.

My father related to Daniel that his father, who grew up in that log cabin told an exciting story about his childhood there.

My grandfather’s father worked for the railroad and would be gone working for a week at a time, leaving my grandfather (as a child), and his mother alone there in the wilderness, to take care of their land.

One day, when my grandfather was about 6 years old, they had a deer caracas hanging in the cabin. A black panther could smell that deer and wanted to eat it. He kept shoving one of his paws between the logs in the cabin wall, trying to reach the deer.

We don’t know how afraid my great-grandmother was, of that panther, but we do know that she very decisively grabbed an axe and chopped his paw off! The panther ran away into the woods. No doubt this incident was indelibly etched on my grandfather’s memory.

My guess would be that my grandmother was pretty scared but was determined to protect not only her son, but also their meat.

Being brave has nothing to do with how scared you feel. It has everything to do with how you choose to act in spite of your fear.

Several years later a neighbor killed a three-legged panther.

My grandfather never forgot that day and it became part of our family lore.

As you can imagine, Daniel was thrilled to hear about the panther and can hardly wait to tell this exciting saga to his classmates. I know that I would have loved to hear Daniel tell his version of that story at school for his classmates.

On Being Brave

The topic of being brave has been something that I have thought about quite a bit during the past 5 years.

Sometimes we are called to be brave in the face of big, scary, black panther moments. In those moments we are often surprised to see that we could do something we never would have thought possible. We find the strength and bravery to act courageously in unimaginably scary situations.

I’ve had a few “black panther moments” in the past 5 years.

On most days though, being brave in everyday life doesn’t look anything like chopping the paw off of a panther.

It’s the daily “being brave” that is the scariest. I don’t have any adrenaline to help me face the wearying battle of daily fear.

The daily brave looks like getting up out of bed and showing up each day for my children even when I find myself totally overwhelmed as a single mom of a large family.

It looks like choosing to put one foot in front of the other, trusting that the Lord will make up for the many things that are too much for me.

It looks like continuing to fumble around in the dark, searching for resources to help several of my older children who are struggling in serious ways with PTSD after living for many years with an abusive father.

It looks like choosing to swim, bike and run my way to “finding my strong” as I battle my own PTSD.  Not just once, but faithfully, every day.

It looks like choosing to find beauty through the lens of my camera or with my watercolors.

There are a huge number of totally inane memes floating around on the the internet. I read one recently that boldly stated: “Faith and fear are mutually exclusive.” That, my friends, is a flat-out lie.

Nearly every day I am forced to deal with situations that are “too much for me.” I am forced to wrestle with fear, not only from outside circumstances, but even worse, from within my non-rational PTSD brain. Even when I am terrified and feel anything but brave, I know that God is still in control. Truly He is my only hope.

It is 100% possible to live with faith and fear together. Fear only makes me human, not faithless. My fear does not negate God’s goodness or His omniscient control over my life.

So here’s to being brave when you are drowning in fear, even when you might feel like you are in the midst of a dark free-fall from unexpected (and undeserved) life-circumstances.

Here’s to being brave, not only in “black panther” moments, but also in the facing of everyday life.