courage

There are all sorts of virtues in life, some we try to emulate and some we consider unimportant. But I have been grappling with something that keeps coming up in my life at sporadic intervals. Almost always before I begin something or end some venture. And I guess we never really need courage just to begin some effort. We don’t either have or do not have it just at a specific period. We need to possess it all the time for us to be able to say we are courageous persons, or fearful ones. Because, we need courage to begin anything, we need courage to continue channeling efforts for that something we have started and sustain its ups and downs, we need courage to finish what we started. And we need courage again to start something new after one has ended. So at particular times when we lose hope and begin to despair….to fear that our efforts are in vain, (faith is not a pill we take but a muscle we use. Faith is when our heart and hands keep on working when our head and others say it can’t be done)…. When we begin to turn away, to feel incapable….when we begin to feel like the worst cowards in the planet, we need something to remind us how we got this far. And that we might not be so cowardly and fretful after all, to have got to this point in the first place. And when I think that I am given only a certain amount of courage to last me for life, and that at a juncture in my life, I feel I’m nearing the end of my stocks, my hand couldn’t grasp any more grains in my bag…. I look back and remember that God always provided for me when I needed it the most. And that if he allowed me to make it through before, He could make it happen again. He could get me through, sustain me through almost anything. I can do almost anything with God. And even when I feel most empty, right now, I have to have faith in the future given my past experience with God. When I feel I lack the virtues I need to go on, I have to believe that God would make it possible for me to develop them, slowly. Little by little. That’s grace. “feel the fear but do it anyway. Because not all courageous persons are unafraid. They are afraid, but despite this crippling fear, they press onward. Difficult, but we never really develop courage if we do not experience fear and decide to rise above it anyway. Slowly but surely, surely it will become easier? But not now.”