Hello, courage. I didn’t expect to meet you with a tissue pressed to my eyes. I didn’t think I’d shake your hand with the vestiges of snot on my own fingers.
Hello, courage. I didn’t imagine making small talk with puffy eyes. I didn’t presume that our conversation would continue with me having sit down because I was so emotionally exhausted.
I didn’t realize all of this brokenness is the route to real strength.
I started this blog in January 2011, on the brink of my last semester of high school. I felt to finish it, like a good book, after my first year of university. In the meantime, I’ve been over at Explorers! The Writings of a Young Teacher, scripting my adventures. Yet somehow, as I was in between waking and sleeping this late afternoon, tucked under a giant wool blanket (courtesy of New Zealand winter), I remembered this blog. And with what Jesus has been doing in my heart over the past few days, or weeks, I realized, I can’t go back to normal.
Which is funny, because I hear the oh-so-familiar title, there’s beauty in the vulnerability… and I am jolted back to my last semester of high school at Makua Lani, and to the lesson I thought I knew so well. As Ann Voskamp wrote just a few days ago, “The world has enough women who live a masked insecurity. It needs more women who live a brave vulnerability.” I read that and realize, this is a lesson I can never leave behind.
Hello, courage. We meet again in the clutter of the tissues, a symphony of snot.
Hello, courage. We chat softly again with red-cried eyes, with carpet making the comfiest couch.
Hello, courage. Let’s not leave this final semester of university, which commenced today, without a dent in the social media world saying that COURAGE IS REAL and fear is ugly and love is beautiful.
And that sometimes… I need to face the gut-wrenching brokenness
to discover your real strength.
