Choose love. Be Brave.
So often we blame our lack of courage, our fear... on a particular event, a past hurt, a memory, an injury. We say like “I’m afraid because this person did this to me & I got hurt.” Or “I’m afraid because my past looked like this & it didn’t feel good.” But, I think we have it backwards saying that we are afraid BECAUSE of something. I think truly our FEAR is not CAUSED by those events. Let me explain. I played soccer in college & in one of the games nearing the end of the season, I went in for a slide tackle & I felt something in my left knee strain. It hurt so I came off the field but I didn’t want to let my team down so I put on a game face & very quickly went back in, decided to play anyway... finished out the rest of the game. I was the captain. They needed me. I played my heart out. A slid, I ran, I sprinted, and I cut hard. A few days later, I went to our team pt & he took a look. “Eeesh... um. You can’t play on that anymore. You definitely haven’t torn it yet but you’ve strained your ACL for sure.” I had a friend in high school tear her ACL in a soccer game. She’d had multiple surgeries. She was always in pain. I knew the stakes were high. In the next game, and you guys have to understand that I’m not only super competitive but I’m the kind of person that wants holds up my end of the bargain no matter what... I tried to go on the field. I lasted for ten minutes. The pain wasn’t any worse than what I’d experienced in the last game. NOT AT ALL. actually it felt better because I’d been icing & stretching like the pt recommended. But, my fear was great. I knew I was injured. I knew what could happen. And Instead of focusing on the game, I was so caught up in my fear, I benched myself for the rest of the season. Now I’m not saying THAT fear wasn’t a healthy one. But think about it for a second. I was the SAME injured with the SAME injury in that first game as I was in the second. BUT, I was so focused on my fear & my pain, that I took myself out of the game. I blamed my crap performance that night on my injury. But, I should have blamed it on my fear. And you know what, the same concept can be applied to my life after Nick died. For so long, I was so angry at God, at how our medical industry works.... that I pushed people away, I stayed holed up in my house, I wrote angry blog posts that I never published to Big Pharma. Bahaha. Sometimes, I was short with people that I loved, as a defense mechanism. I didn’t want anyone too close. And when I thought about WHY I was that way, it was soo easy for me to blame it on my loss. I don’t like people & hate God because my husband died too young. But, you know what’s nuts? Now, im not saying I’m great at it by any means, but now... I TRY. I try to let people in, to get to know them & let them know me. I lean into my Creator & on Jesus, & i truly truly love him. BUT, realize something, That hurt, & that pain, the HUGE LOSS... that injury NEVER went away. BUUUT, my choice to hold onto the fear I first created around it, did. I chose to LET GO of the fear I had created around my loss & instead choose bravery. Instead choose love. When I say fear is a choice. This is what I’m talking about. BRAVE people are not people who are void of hurts, insecurities or fears, they are just the people that decide they are not going to let it rule over them.
