courage

...Surviving is about courage and faith....


Sometimes it takes courage just to keep going.
Sometimes it's about doing the right thing.
Or sometimes you just have to have courage so that you can prove to yourself that you CAN do it.

I've been telling myself for forever that once I turned 16, I'd donate blood. Blood is so needed by so many people and well, I've got it to give.

But when the blood drive was announced at my school, I thought Oh man... I'm actually 16 now! It took me about a week just to get the courage to sign up. I seriously asked a dozen people what it was like, watched youtube videos, read what people thought on Yahoo Answers... (LOVE Yahoo Answers! Wouldn't have an A in Chemistry without it!)

Eventually, the day before the blood drive, I had a moment of courage and told my bff Sydney that if we didn't go sign up THIS SECOND, I wouldn't be able to do it.

I was so SO scared. Scared of passing out, that it would hurt for a year, that I wouldn't be able to play the region championship game we had that night, (we WON!! I still am an idiot for playing in that game. I was out of breath after 3 minutes. ha.) I was just SO freaked out for so many reasons. Most of them entirely impractical.

I just kept telling myself that it wasn't a big deal and it would go perfectly.

But you know what? Friday came and I donated blood. And it didn't go perfectly, but I still did it. (hehe... they had a hard time finding my vein so they had to go kinda deep or something like that, because it hurt really bad the whole time instead of just during the initial stick... but I still did it!!)

And I'm pretty proud if I do say so myself.

And now that I've done it once, I can do it next time easier. (Hoping beyond hope that it goes easier, less painful, and faster!) :)


Courage isn't something you're born with. At least I don't think so.

Courage isn't about wanting to go skydiving or bungee jumping.
Courage is about being scared out of your pants to go skydiving and still jumping out of the plane.

Courage is about pressing forward even if you are worried about the future.
It's about trusting in the Lord even if you want to scream and cry because you are so scared.

It's about doing His will even if it's hard for you to accept.

It's about initiative.

Doing what you have to do even if you dread the possible outcome.

It's when grief and pain are on the front porch and you open the door and deal with them head on.
Because you know they're not going to leave and putting things off doesn't get anyone anywhere.


We agreed to do hard things before we came here. We agreed to be tried and tested. And we were excited to prove ourselves.

I think trials ended up being harder to get through than we had originally imagined.
But they're still there.

And the courageous thing to do is to deal with them so that we can keep on keeping on.

And enduring to the end. That takes courage.






P.S. What things have YOU done that required courage??