A last word on courage

So, it's day 31. I want to leave a brief final thought. Courage is the starting point. It connects desire with attempt, question with answer, 'I want to be' with 'I am.' And it can't be faked because it's entirely personal and you will know if you're acting out of fear or courage. So what are you afraid of? I've realized that the thing I love most about myself is my honesty. I don't let myself get away with putting on airs and making up stuff because I taste the lies like bile in the back of my throat. I'm not interested in pleasing any person except that guy with the blurry eyes who stuck his smirking face in my photo, making it one of my most treasured possessions. On that trip, he taught me you can be inspired by others but you're rarely moved by them. That power lies in your spirit – your soul – the part of you that gives you the look when you slip into acting instead of living.

When Joshua took over leading Israel, God spent a lot of time telling him to be strong and courageous. He said it over and over. Be strong and very courageous because I'm with you. For what? Be courageous for what?

For anything.

Courage protects inspiration

Inspiration can feel so real – so tangible – yet misty and finite. It slips though my fingers when I return home, exhausted, trying to find a way to keep the fire lit. Mountain Workshops blaze wildly with inspiration caught and shared, but I come back to this place full of people who weren't there and I try to protect that flame. I'm lucky to work in the field I'm passionate about. I like to write creative essays that relate more feeling than information, but I'm more passionate about the utility of beautiful, thoughtful writing. Art is important to every person because it connects mind, body, and soul through its subtleties. It connects us to a level of humanity we don't see when we're punching the clock or drowning out the chaos of home or neighborhood or love.

And I believe art and beauty and meaning find their root in a Creator – and in the ones made in His image. So when the pastor says to bring Jesus into my workplace, I hear Take the beauty with you wherever you go. Create, build, inspire because you are made like your Maker.

Sometimes the fire turns to smoke. In church, they call it a mountain-top experience – and valleys follow mountains. This week I've suffered a fun-hangover. In a crowd of like-minded, energized people, it's easy to stay atop that mountain. Coming home, being alone, it all feels like work again.

If I want to do this – tell stories, climb mountains, live a bold life – I have to protect inspiration. I can't be the grass that blows in the wind. I have to be the redwood. Quiet and strong, I create something new every day. I seek out others' art, bearing witness to the gold they spin from straw. I critique and construct, finding the rhythm in my thoughts and translating fear into feasibility. Inspiration is no use if it remains airy and intangible. More than a neat idea to press forward because you're an artist!, you have to give yourself to it everyday, becoming a little more vulnerable ... a little more open.

It's no small task to keep the fire through self-doubt and rejection and monotony. But it is essential.

Courage makes a way

photo by Kendra Dahl

When we moved here, I had few work options. I didn't seek a journalism job during our last year in Minneapolis because I felt burnt out – and scared. I thought I should have done more with my time in college. I feared job rejection and, worse, I feared getting hired, then not cutting it. The world of journalism is one of connections – of public image. And if I bombed, all my classmates and former colleagues would see it. 

So I moved, hoping for a writing job, because not only did two years of taking risks outside make me feel more confident in my other skills, but I also felt rejuvenated after working a labor-intensive job where I met all kinds of interesting people that I wished I could write about. It took a few months to get into the newspaper in Bowling Green, but I was never idle. I researched stories and pitched them to places I never heard back from. And I got involved with Wolftree magazine, a growing biannual magazine "for makers, dreamers, and adventurers," that tells stories of people in the Midwest.

I copy-edited an issue before pitching a couple stories. They posted one today – the first in a short series of stories about people and places in North Dakota. The stories are four years old, and they'd been collecting dust on my hard drive all that time. My sister and I recorded them one summer when I could have interned at a newspaper or magazine somewhere else. Reading them again and seeing them published reminds me that, despite the fear I had that my journalistic path wouldn't land me a job, I wouldn't trade the time. I make my own way in life, and that includes this writing / career thing. So far it has served me well. I'm curious and open-minded enough to find what works for me and not feel too hurt when a plan doesn't work out. Actually, that's a lesson I learned my first semester at the Minnesota Daily. If someone doesn't call you back, you adapt. And that's what makes it your path.

Courage to let the work speak

We tossed the topic back and forth, trying to find the words to his story. I want tangible and abstract examples to move through the same depth his photo coach talks about. Move in close, then back far away – let the story breathe. He asked me how long I've been doing this.

Well, I said, hesitating because I've sensed this question the last two days. I'm 24, I told him, and I went to school for this. So... a handful of years.

I laughed at the sound of shock in his voice because it sounds the same everywhere I go.

But shouldn't I be good at something that transcends hobby and occupation? If I've spent five years practicing communication of feelings and events, shouldn't I know how to do this better than someone who hasn't kept a daily journal or a blog or an inner dialogue that wonders at motivation and sees juxtaposed action and belief everywhere she goes? It's not really something I just do.

We see age before most other things when we encounter a stranger. We compare and contrast experience based on the figure. We say someone looks good for their age or has the wisdom of years. We describe children as precocious. We calculate maturity based on how far removed a person is from age 18. And I think we squash each other when we do it. Age is a piece but it's never the whole.

I consider the stories we're telling at this workshop and the varying ages of subjects. We push past age because it's cliche to sum up a life with a number. I read recently that researchers have developed a way to assess a person's age by their health rather than their years.

But you can't control perception. I can't criticize someone's raised eyebrow. All I can do is say what's in my head and write what I know and let it all speak for itself. Because we're like the spiders! And the courageous are okay with that.

Courage in work

                   

The drive east in Kentucky grabs your attention differently than mountains. From back highways, farmsteads sit nestled in valleys surrounded by hills covered in fall colors. I passed through counties I'd only heard mentioned, watching the last bit of sunset light up the tallest branches.

This week I'm in Berea, Ky. with Mountain Workshops, a weeklong course that takes photojournalism students to a new city or county each year, gives them a story, and publishes a photo essay of their work. I'm here as a writing coach and I will work with a group of photographers as they put together a story package that includes a short written story. Because I'm blogging from here this week, I thought I would take some time to write about courageous work.

Before I hiked any trails or climbed any mountains, I moved to Minneapolis to study journalism. I chose it because writing was my only identifiable skill and after taking a creative writing class in high school, I knew that wasn't the route for me. When I joined the Minnesota Daily staff my second semester at school, I was the youngest in the newsroom. I was asked to repeat my age every time we got together outside the office and I ordered a coke.

I'm usually a shy person. I can write, but approaching a source and asking for access to his or her story is ... terrifying. I learned after a few weeks that first semester at the Daily that it's the kind of fear that wakes me up. I learned from people who seemed fearless. I nudged into conversations about stories and sources and ethics and craft and it lit up this opposite-self that wants to do more than sit back and observe the commotion. 

When mountains came along, I recognized that feeling - the anxiety that do it even though it could be terrible. I can't imagine making the safe choice. I can't imagine what that kind of walking death feels like.

Courage and life

As he sleeps, precise and small, you can't picture the force of life he exudes while awake. And when he's loud, contorting his face and debating the relative ferocity of a zombie or a raptor apocalypse, you would never imagine his stillness / assurance / mindfulness / perseverance / stature / wholeness. His complexity permits my own – draws it out the way no one ever did before he waved at me on a university sidewalk, took me into the country to shoot guns and run around outside, and introduced me to his greatest loves. He was a tiger in a cage then. You could feel the tension in his pacing and hear the change in his laugh when he was set free.

I live out my days this way, watching him sleep in our studio apartment that he picked because it had character, wondering how he holds back the life that threatens to burst out of every pore. I pray for more reckless, pure passion that ferociously beats against our walls – swoops in and captures us. And we wake every morning to give more of ourselves, and, in turn, receive the reward of watching abundant life swallow everything that has to die to loose the freedom we were made for.

Courage in all four corners - part 4

It's neat. I started hiking and climbing and I became more brave and wild. I slowed down and focused on the process of life and I grew to enjoy the way we live. I'm calmer on the inside. More than changing how we live, all of this revealed why we live. That's the thing that matters, isn't it?

My soul is the ring-leader that stirs up boldness in my heart, mind, and strength. It is the root to a tree growing tall and standing through storms and seasons. It is the part no one sees, and authenticity lives there. Courage fills your soul when you embrace the identity only Christ can give you – the breath of life that makes man alive.

The Lion was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at other people and either hug them or fight them. ... Aslan threw up his shaggy head, opened his mouth, and uttered a long, single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly's heart jumped in her body when she heard it. She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard the call would want to obey it and (what's more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between.  (The magician's nephew)

Courage stops looking for balance

I started to pray and it began to feel like rambling, trying to capture the image behind my closed eyes. As she inhales, Lord, letting muscles and joints fill with fresh fire, make room for more of You. She was looking for space – space to remember, space to enjoy. Space to notice the things she doesn't any more because life has come down to schedule and time is money. She wants nothing of that any more. As much as she wanted to make all the puzzle pieces fit together, she heeded the voice that said to throw them out and let him work.

We speak of balancing life like we all suffer from multiple, conflicting personalities. We pace in our souls, arguing with God for more money, more time, more acknowledgment – enough to maintain the balance of humility and sacrifice we agreed to. Like caged animals, we wonder if all this foot-stomping will wear a hole in the floor through which we can escape and taste pure freedom of desires uninhibited. Balance is a word we use euphemistically. We should say deserve, which really means entitled, which really means spoiled rotten. Rotten like molding food or missing teeth, not like adorable children with doting grandparents. Decaying flesh on a body meant to be made of heavenly stuff.

Balance captures a mysterious equilibrium that no one can quantify but everyone holds up as an end-all answer. How much can I spend on myself? She asks. It isn't that any of those things is bad, he says. It's about your heart. You have to find balance.

While we reach for wisdom, we're called foolish. Where we express the ultimate achievement of standing right-side up on two grounded feet, Jesus shook the world upside-down by its ankles. Where we carve out time for work, time for adventure, time for God, Jesus said leave everything and follow. In following you will work. In following you will adventure. In following you will give and not expect to receive because you are filled from the inside, like the oil that  never stopped flowing. 

When I find balance standing on my hands, it's not the result of standing really still and focusing on an unmoving object. It is spirit moving in opposite directions. My fingers cling to the ground, my the muscles in my arms and stomach constrict, and I take deep, steady breaths. Balance is anything but passive. It is the world pressing in disastrously and my Father lifting up faithfully. It is the tension of wanting life to serve me and instead asking God to fill me.

&&&

I wrote this during a seven-day writing challenge in December. It's what I wanted to write today, and I knew I had once already. If there's one thought I've really embraced in my year of courage, it's this. Balance is not attainable because it's a lie. Life is priorities and choices and commitments, but mostly it consists of waking every morning to Creation, meet your God. We battle the world like we're an immune system, and we do it with joy and with flair. Because what is the point of keeping all those plates spinning, again? What is the point of all the things we want because it makes us look better? We ask silly questions about what we can and can't do because we want someone to give us rules to live by. I'm sorry, there's only one: Love God, love people. And if your busy! day prevents you from enjoying that calling, you're doing it wrong. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Courage: making hard things easier

I'm nearing the end of a week full of extra hours and extra things. I'm loving it, but it takes time away from this. So instead, here's a post I wrote for rockclimbingwomen.com that appeared a few months ago:

My alarm rings at 5 a.m. and I have two options. I run through the reasons to to pull off the covers one more time: I’m comfortable, not sleepy. The sun is coming up. It’s quiet and cool outside. It’s just 30 minutes.

And then there’s the biggest reason: I’m a rock climber with no rocks to speak of.

It’s easy to forget I’m in training mode. I read over and over that the best way to improve as a climber is to climb. I envy those I see living with renowned climbing areas in their backyard. You have it so good! But more than envy, I look forward to the day I’ll join the ranks of recreation-for-life-not-just-vacation. Until that day, I have vacation. I have seven glorious days planned in Rocky Mountain National Park in July and the alpine climbs call my name.

Until then, I rely on the playground at the top of the hill. It’s the finish line for most of our running routes, which vary in length between 2 and 10 miles. I use monkey bars, platforms, and grass to do push-ups, pull-ups, bar-hangs, dips, squats, planks, and yoga. I work out with my climbing partner & husband because without him pushing me, I would never go beyond that initial moment of discomfort. Getting up a half hour early is a recent change. I needed something fresh because it got too easy to make excuses in the evening. Now I get up, get my juices flowing, and tell myself I can have a second go later, if I want.

Most days and weeks, my workouts are all over the place. Juggling two work schedules requires enough routine that adding a regimented training program – even the idea of it! – bores me. Also, in general, I’m stubborn and developing willpower to do something I don’t enjoy is really asking a lot. For a while that meant I didn’t train, and I whined every time we made it out to climb because I wasn’t any good. I finally figured it out! Training is important because the outcome lets me do something I desperately want to do. So when my alarm rings, I can get out of bed (most of the time) to do something I want to do. And I try to remember: This is fun!

Training without rocks is not the same, but I see a difference once I find a wall to climb. I tackle harder moves and I have a better attitude on pitch 4 of 8. I want to be strong – mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually – because it makes hard things easier. I’ve found that all those things are tied together, so as I grow stronger in one, I grow stronger in all.

This post appeared first on rockclimbingwomen.com

Look back when you need courage

The most common reaction I get from my personal writing, like this blog, goes something like, "You said what I was thinking and couldn't say." It's really an honor to hear something like that. There are a number of places I turn for when I can't make sense out of my feelings and thoughts, and I'm thankful for the clearing-the-air power they seem to have. One of my friends once said there is a difference between the song that makes you feel a certain way and a song that helps you feel what you're feeling. 

When someone says I write what they were thinking, I have to fight the pressure to flip the equation – to want to know what they're thinking so I can write about it. The voices shout over one another and the page stares blankly and the cursor crosses its arms and taps it foot. I look frantically for inspiration to give me enough juice to crank out something useful for the masses.

And when I've found none, I go back. I read old posts and old journals and I remember old prayers. I scroll through all our pictures and look at the scars on my hands that correspond with those bloody knuckles. And I remember the first person who said, Wow you wrote what I was thinking –––– it was me. 

Courage to follow

In climbing, they call it taking the sharp end of the rope. It's usually Ben's role, and we both enjoy that. As the stronger climber who is, generally and specifically, the braver of the two of us, he scouts ahead, moving us farther away from the ground.

As the second climber, my role is patience and speed. I wait while he climbs, places gear, and sets an anchor. I wait for the tug or the call that tells me to catch up. A lot of climbing teams will trade leading pitch-by-pitch because it's faster. And if their skills align, it gives each climber the chance to be the sharp end, taking the associated risks and gaining the rewards of ascending a tough route.

For my own sake, I hope I will lead someday. I think it will be a milestone in my quest to let go of fear and trust my skills. But even the way I talk about it – "someday" – reveals my true feelings. I like to follow. I'm comfortable following. Considering the many fear- and discomfort-related hurdles I've jumped as we've pursued this sport, I like that I can keep at least one aspect comfortable.

The first time he led me on a trad multipitch route, we were in Wyoming. We planned a trip to see family in Spearfish Canyon in the fall. We brought a friend and planned to introduce him to the area.

What if we climbed Devils Tower? the friend asked a week before our roadtrip.

What if we did? It's a short drive from the canyon.

We had some tell us we weren't ready for such a climb because Ben's trad experience was minimal and didn't include real multipitch routes. But as we talked, Ben grew more confident that he had the right skills, he just hadn't ever put them together. And eventually you just have to do it.

I worried for a moment. New to climbing and brand new to the world of trad, I didn't understand the work it would involve and what, if any, expectations it would put on me. But a week and a 10-hour drive later, we drove to the Tower before dawn and picked out our route (Durrance). We were alone for awhile as we started to climb. It took us ... a really long time. Longer than it should and longer than it will again.

This style of climbing opened up a new world of possibilities for us. It spoke to our wish for adventure because it gave us the skills and the scope to want more than to get out of a car on the side of the road and hop on a crag. We could camp, hike in, climb for the whole day, and leave with the satisfaction we'd usually achieved only after days- or weeks-long backpacking trips. And it restored balance to our climbing relationship. As much as I need his bravery and skills to learn from, he needs my willingness to follow. Unless you free solo, you need someone who will catch up, or, duh, you can't keep climbing higher.

Sometimes it's hard to follow, and I'm talking about life now. It's hard to look at the person in front of you and trust that he's got the right idea. And I worry often that that's the only definition of following that we know – one that offends many women, including me because it devalues the secondary position. When we climb, I follow. When we moved to Bowling Green, I followed. When we move again, whether to take a job for me or for him, it will follow a dream I wouldn't have if it weren't for Ben. But none of that negates the truth that following takes decision and courage. It takes trust. It takes initiative. It takes self-awareness. And if I didn't follow, in climbing or in life, he would lose heart. Not because he lacks ambition or will, but because the degree of his ambition and will requires support. Someone to untangle the rope and recover gear – someone to pay the bills when he works those 100 hours I mentioned (you'll notice I didn't say someone to clean the house because we both do!). Someone to catch up and share the joy of hanging on the side of a cliff 800 feet off the ground.



Useful definitions
Trad or traditional climbing refers to using the natural features of the rock to place protective gear as you climb. Once you place equipment, you clip in the rope, stringing it up with you. 
Multipitch climbing refers to climbing routes that reach beyond the length of a single rope. To climb higher than 100 to 200 feet, one person climbs, builds an anchor out of protective gear that they hauled up with them, and the second person climbs up to meet the first. The second person is basically top-roping, but instead of tagging the anchor and descending, the couple will repeat the process until they've both reached the top.

Courage of children

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

(G.K. Chesterton)

Courage in all four corners - part 3

I invited my sister to contribute to my 31 days of Courage with a post on courage in strength. As a personal trainer, she advocates building strength in every part by building strength in your body. She understands better than most I've heard that you can't disconnect your faith, your work, your passions, your mindset from your body. 

&&&

I take one last inhale of my fall-scented candle and blow it out. It’s five minutes to 7 and I’ve got a little boy with gas and a little girl who will need breakfast soon. My husband is still sleeping. His hour of work turned into 2 a.m. again and his already sleep-deprived body can’t take much more of this. But it must. And it will. Because there is a mission whose importance does not diminish because fatigue has set in.

So I blow out my candle, the one that I light when I am taking the big inhales and exhales while the rest of my people are still sleeping, and I stand up. Time to keep going.

I clutch the one-month-old little boy in one arm and my coffee cup in the other hand. I feel the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS to the meatheads out there) causing my chest and front shoulder muscles to spasm as I hold him tightly. Soreness from the day before yesterday when I wanted to be done but my husband and most reliable coach whispered, “Do another one, and another one, trust me, I’ve got you, do it again.” Until I had benched near my body weight for 10 reps. 

Courage sometimes means walking straight into pain. We do it every morning by necessity – and many other times by choice. If you don’t train yourself to walk alongside fear and pain without faltering, how will you fair when the real moment arrives? In many ways, this is why I chose to pick up a barbell. I say “I chose” because at the beginning, I was a passive participant in the weight room. Physical weakness met mental and emotional immaturity and I floundered. But then I learned to linger in the pain.

Feel the sensation of the weight on your back, threatening to master you. Feel the lengthening of your muscles and the force of their subsequent slow contraction. Five seconds doesn’t sound like that big of a deal but then again, a lot of things sound easy until you are under their weight. Most likely (unless you are used to this sort of thing), your mind will give out before your body does. How is it that a training technique designed to build strength in fewer sets could continuously teach me about how to persevere in the every day? 

My daughter has begun to say things like “I can’t” and “too hard.” My only guess is she picked it up from me. Maybe she read my mind all those times I looked at her with empty eyes after she disobeyed me yet again and I was lost as to what to do next. There are many times where the only prayer I can manage is “Jesus, too hard.” It’s in these moments that I get the chance to explain to her, and ultimately to myself, that yes. This life is too hard. We are too small and too weak. We will never be able to endure the pain and discomfort of this world. We must keep pursuing the Light our soul craves. The Bread our bodies require. The Shepherd our weary bones can trust.

In C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy return to Narnia as children. They ruled once before as adults, but their memories are foggy and their childhood weakness has returned. Fear and uncertainty creeps in and dictates their actions. The more time they spend in Narnia, however, the more their bodies remember their old skills. And when the breath of Aslan poured into them, they began to look more like adults than children, according to Lucy, with strength and courage overflowing from them.

As they drew closer to the Lion, they began to imitate him.

Courage you wear

I can't say for sure why I've walked to so many edges in my short life, but I appreciate the metaphor.

He stood next to me and I looked down at the beautiful, frigid water 30 feet below. I balked a couple times, so he didn't believe me when I finally counted 3 and jumped.

The leap is quick. It's over in a moment, but the rush brought on by the pull of gravity lingers long. By the time you return to the top, courage has faded, and it's another fight to jump again. Climbing has weakened my fear, but hasn't erased it.

When someone says they could never ___________, I tell them I'm afraid of heights. To say fear stops you – it feels inhuman. It is a broken part of human nature after the Fall. People cringe at all sorts of things, but I hear most often that people are afraid to lose control and to be alone.

The leap is important and it's real despite the way the flash makes you wonder if your heart played a trick the way you're not certain if the light flickered or if you blinked. The leap proves it's in there. When the questions outweighed the answers, you stopped worrying long enough to do something remarkable – apply to that job, ask out that girl, whatever. If it's in there, you can build on it.

The leap is easy because it's over before you've registered the danger. You pack up and move far from home, riding the wave of adrenaline until you realize the job you thought you'd find right away isn't willing to oblige. And then you need more than a leap. Every day takes courage. Less like a leap, more like a long hike to find the way down. The edges you stand on are reduced to your doorway where he goes away for days and weeks at a time because we both have this dream that his skills will take us to amazing places if we just wait a little bit longer.



We reached the foot of Hallett Peak and the sky was clear. I pushed down the nauseous nervous feeling as we tied in, standing in a snow moat. He started the climb. A little ways up, he dislodged a boulder. I pressed into the corner and kept my head down. No harm done.

Five or six pitches up, I started to get tired and we moved a little slower. We saw the clouds in the distance, right on time but too soon. This is the only way to practice, but it will involve figuring out what to do when we're caught in a storm at 13,000 feet.

He'd reached the top and anchored his body between two boulders when the hail came. I started the crux pitch, which is probably the crux because of the way the slightest bit of rain turns the rock into a slippery mess with no holds. The clouds broke briefly and I made it to the top to see the system he'd put in place with the backup knot that would hold me if he'd been struck by lightning.

At the top, you're only halfway there, and most injuries occur on the way down. You lower your guard. The rain quit for awhile, but the clouds closed in around us, and the recommended way off the mountain seemed quick but dangerous. We turned our backs to it and hiked higher.

The top housed a meadow of little yellow flowers in patches of grass. Nearby rocks bore lightning scars. But what else do you do? Keep hiking. Quit asking why – quit wishing you preferred beach vacations. I could barely see him 50 feet ahead of me, and he could barely see the grin stretched across my face. I've never felt so alive.

Do you know why we didn't have to stop and pray for strength and wisdom? Because Ben wasn't lost. He looked at the mountain and the map and knew a ridge would bring us downhill, around the lake and back to the car.

Sometimes courage is leaping before thinking. Other times it's outsmarting the fear. That's the difference between a series of sporadic adventures and consistently looking at the world differently. You learn to act according to a new set of rules and circumstances. You build a new foundation of natural responses. You become a new person. Instead of throwing on courage at the edge, you wear it everywhere you go.

And soon you'll stop asking how you got here because you'll remember the hike.

Courage doesn't stay home

(In all your time on earth – years 

or moments – do you really want to say 

you always wondered what it would feel 

or taste or look like? Or do you want to 

describe it in detail? Are you afraid to 

get hurt? To get lost? Are you afraid you'll 

finally do it and the best thing about it 

was the dreaming? Then you're doing it 

wrong. The journey means nothing unless 

you arrive. And from here, journey no. 2 

looks even better.)

Courage where you are

"When we moved to Bowling Green? No, it wasn't what I expected. The city was a little bit bigger. Our apartment was a little bit smaller. But I found a job after only a couple of months. And that was just in time for Ben to start his first semester, which kept him working something like ... 100 hours a week? Yeah, he's still doing that this semester. He led a climbing trip out of town two weekends ago. then he worked all day and evening Monday. They left Thursday morning for the fall break hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. He got home Sunday night around 9 and then he had to be at work at 7 in the morning. So it's just ... hard. Right now. Not because I can't spend time on my own – he picked the right girl because I can find things to do. But it's hard. You look someone in the eye and promise him that his adventure will be your adventure when truthfully we've spent our first three years pursuing our own thing. And I can tell it's not how it's supposed to be because we both feel out of breath. We both know we're just surviving here. He walks in most days and makes a new pile of junk in a new corner of our studio apartment that I have to straddle to get to the microwave or the sink or the computer. I tell him every day, 'These piles are driving me crazy. You can't keep doing this.' But we both know I'm just saying it. We both know I'll pick up and he'll make more piles. All I have for him right now is that promise that where he goes, I'll go. And this year that's Kentucky, where he has no personal margin and makes the income of a graduate assistant. I get to write. That's my consolation. It's been ... strange, almost. I've never had so much ambition. I've never been so willing to see the idea in my head and make it happen. Visualizing is a big thing for me. I can remember doing it for the first time when I was 8 or 9 and we had a trampoline in our backyard. I remember daydreaming about doing back flips. I mean, I was scared of getting double bounced. And I'd hit my head on a diving board a couple years earlier while doing a flip. So I was scared. But I wanted to do it and, in my head, I saw myself doing it. But creating has never been that way for me. Usually I have a wild imagination and no way to turn it into real life. Until now. I don't look ahead to next year and imagine everything will be perfect once we move somewhere else. At least I try to avoid it. Even when he feels frustrated with the demands of his job or when he covers his limbs in poison ivy cream because the Southeast can be a miserable place to lead trips ... we both know we asked for this. And there's so many little things I'm thankful for. Nothing ever lasts long and it's so stupid to hate it while it's here. Because later you could realize it was the best thing that's ever happened to you."

Courage in all four corners - part 2

The problem with chopping self into pieces manifests at the times you could really use strong body and mind but only one understands the scenario. It's why they say running is so hard, and runners are so strong. You don't only discipline your body to run the miles or the speed you want, you discipline your mind to take the same strain. And the same in reverse. Say you work a job that stresses your mind while you sit in a chair. Then, at home, you try to unwind by sitting in a chair and watching TV. The body is made to act as a release valve.

I've grown used to running without Ben and I sometimes like the silence. I don't wear headphones, either. I might get a song – set to my pace – stuck in my head and I'll pass mile after mile with it. Or I might think about nothing at all. And the stress collects in sweaty patches on my forehead, my upper back.

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Your mind is a battlefield, I read Sunday morning, curled up in my bed. The temperature has dropped here. It's 62 degrees in my house and it was 80 just a handful of nights ago. Every year I have to learn again the tenets of layering clothing.

Our culture obsesses over the mind. A new aspect of psychology studies Happiness. Scientists study which areas of the brain light up when musicians improvise. And we live in fear of the mind when it's broken and twisted, compelling someone to harm others or himself.

I can tell you the importance of mental courage when it comes to this blog's usual subject matter, but the audience I'm aware of doesn't necessarily share our pursuit of alpine climbing or hiking. And people who do what we do already understand mental toughness. So I'm going to take this another direction.

Let's explore depth.

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My sister (also participating in #write31days) reminded me in her Day 3 post that we enjoyed a privileged upbringing. My parents gave us space to explore and, my dad especially, pushed us to include our brains in the exploration. He said he could accept whatever we grew up to believe as long as it had a foundation of truth pushed to its limits. Popular ideas can be right, but only once pursued to their depths.

It takes courage to examine. Not only is it possible that by following some of our worst thoughts, we enter a war no one else can see, but by engaging where we once accepted, it's likely we'll start to reject conventional.

But Jesus ("You have heard that it is said...") intends us to do so.

When I realize weeks have gone by without my noticing, I usually see a pattern of avoiding time that's quiet because I'm avoiding confronting a thought with which I'm uncomfortable. Boredom is one of those things. A bored Christian has to ask herself what she doesn't believe about God and His abundant life.

Besides being true, the phrase ignorance is bliss is an escape route and I've never thought about that before is a symptom of fear I see often in Jesus-loving Christians who will talk about the way they feel until they've run out of words but will not use their minds to discern those feelings or read their Bible to transform their thoughts.

I struggle with being argumentative because I like to feel smart. That's not what I'm talking about when I say it's time to go deeper. In the Google age where I can ask any question and get a curated list of writers who have done the researching and thinking for me, it's time to ask for wisdom.

In his sermon on the first few verses of Romans 6, John Piper said the way to think courageously is to think and live with patience through pain and complexity. Don't skip over it. Don't sideline topics as high-brow or difficult because you don't know how to think about them. I recommend you listen to the whole thing. Here's a snipit from the introduction:

In the American church especially, we have created all kinds of Christ-coded quick fixes and solutions and programs that smooth out the problems of our lives, make our lives a little more livable and don't go very deep. Therefore we're not the kinds of saints our forefathers were. We're not sages ... We're not very strong in the midst of pain and suffering and persecution. We're pretty thin-skinned and pretty flimsy saints. 

J.I. Packer has a very good book called A Quest for Godliness about the Puritans. He compares the Puritans to the redwoods in California. You can drive through a redwood. You can drive your car through a redwood – a living one! So he said the redwoods are like the old British Puritans. ... Many of them died for their faith. Their roots go unbelievably deep down into the soil of the Bible. And the branches of these lives go unbelievably high into the mysteries of heaven. And the trunks of these Puritan trees sustain forest fires and do not die but only get scorched. That's how strong and deep and high are the redwoods. He said the Puritans were like that. He read his eyes over the contemporary American pragmatic / quick-fix / mile-wide / inch-deep church and he said, "Affluence seems for the past generation appears to have been making dwarfs and deadheads of us all." So much impatience with depth. So much impatience with complexity. So much impatience with pain. [We say,] "Just give me a list. Tell me how to make soup [serve], tell me how to take the mask off [kill sin]. I'll do it! But don't bend my brain with complexity and mystery and make me think and by all means don't create any discomfort or pain for me because, frankly, I just want my life to go a little better." ... There aren't many sages in the American church. ... Roots unbelievably deep in the Bible. Branches unbelievably high in the glories of heaven. A life lived of 10, 20, 30, 50 years of suffering and pain and confusion and fought it all through and thought it all through. Where are the sages – men and women? 

I've said it already: When you know who you are, you'll know what to do*. And how can you know who you are if you do not ask hard questions?




*Mark Driscoll said this repeatedly in his sermon series on Ephesians, which delved into a Christian's identity in Christ. 

Courage hopes

Remember courage hopes. Remember today when he's gone and you're here that courage looks forward to the next adventure as fuel for this moment when you feel at a loss. Remember courage hopes for more, hungers for more, and trusts there will be more because everything is being redeemed. And if there isn't more today or tomorrow or in 10 years, courage keeps its head up because there is another side of this life that will not disappoint. Courage holds on, holds steady, holds together heart, mind, soul, strength because courage finds its footing in a certainty that transcends setting. Keep walking.

Courage in all four corners - part 1

We're odd creatures, hacking ourselves into pieces because it appears easier. On our best days, we know self is comprised of heart, mind, soul, strength, but we mostly forget. We build compartments within, separating business and pleasure, detaching mind from heart. And we run around crazy and flailing, preaching the false gospel of balance and wondering why fatigue is all our pieces share.

Do not sacrifice your heart for your mind, nor your body for your soul. Offer your [whole] self – that is worship.

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I lay in the bed of a pickup and he's holding a .22. It's one of the last times I'll wear this tie dye shirt because he hates it.

I prop my elbows on the hard plastic and it's difficult to see his demonstration, so I use the heel of my left hand to crank my head around, so I'm looking over my shoulder. He explains the way to keep the gun steady with the shot: squeeze the trigger on the exhale and squeeze it slow.

The first thing Ben taught me was how to shoot a gun. The second was how to be the kind of friend that makes a good story.

I've studied story and story-telling because there's something magical and terrifying about the thread we knit between our hearts. As C.S. Lewis said, to love is to be vulnerable. Out my window, I can see the last two strands of a spider's web connecting two bushes. It clings against the wind and the wind is strong today.

He shows more than he tells. On adventures big and small, I glimpse loyalty, love, and pursuit. With him, the fragile line is strung through danger and laughter.

We hop in the pickup, driving to another range whose targets – several busted TVs – are already blown to pieces. He hands me a shot gun, and I look at him. He doesn't wear that hat anymore, but he used to wear it everyday, just like that: folded in the back, slightly resembling Robin Hood. He kept his hair cut close.

Telling is the easy part. You meet a stranger and, before you know it, they've said it all. They want to matter, to find their place in history, even if only one mind houses them.

Courage knows the risks of pushing past knowledge and entering the story's frame. 

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. (C.S. Lewis)

Hold it steady, he says. 

I exhale and squeeze the trigger. And the recoil brings the scope right back into my eye.

Courage lives in love

Pause.

I've started this series in the middle for a reason.

Courage always has a reason.

As I've described, there was a time when I was not awake to myself, to my God, to His desire for my purposeful, full-out, filled-in life. I realize now that, during that time, I didn't like myself very much. I caved deeper and deeper into myself, grappling with friendships that felt shallow, wondering why I didn't hack it with other people. Truthfully, I didn't hack it with myself.

When I stare at my feet, I look up only to find I've walked in small circles. Revelations revisited every few weeks, months, years – stale. Circle again and I stand in the same place.

Living life with courage started to happen naturally when I paused and acknowledged I had no idea who I was and especially who I was to Jesus. I cling to a phrase I heard in a sermon – "When you know who you are, you'll know what to do."

They asked me where I'll be in five years, and I couldn't answer. I have no idea where I'm going. I have no idea what any of this is for.

I woke up in the middle and I lived far from courage – stunted because I feared fear and failure.

He sat on the end of his couch and I sat on the opposite end, facing him. His wife, my mentor, busied herself with coffee and kitchen and children and we talked, waiting for her. He'd returned to preaching in a one-time-only appearance. He preached on love, on what it means and what it makes us:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

This verse in John expresses Christ's security in his past, present, and future, he said. On his last night in the same room as the man who would sell him to his enemies, near the disciple who would disown him, staring at the hour when emotional and physical pain would culminate in his excruciating death, Jesus performed a task they could not understand and usually would not respect.

Courage rose from supper, laid aside his embarrassment, his longing to be understood, his anxiety over the future.

Before Him, in our eyes, lay chaos. But the Son, who is one with the Father, who knows His Father's will and submits to it, found freedom to give Himself – to love – because He knew the answer to the biggest question.

I Am.

Courage lives with Him – dwells in us. We know glimpses of it the way we know glimpses of glory. We hear creation's whispers of God. But it never emerges whole without Him.

Just as I have loved you, you also ought to love one another. Love opposes fear.

Love is selflessly seeking what is best for the other, he said. But we can only love others this way when we find ourselves wholeheartedly in Christ, who demonstrates His love for us in this: while we sought ourselves, our pleasure, our glory, Christ died for the ungodly.

We were on vacation and I wanted to cliff jump into the sea like everyone else. So my mom took my hand and counted to three and jumped. Years later, she said she wanted to teach her children it is good to be brave.

Courage lives in love.