Shakespeare pens Caesar as saying, “Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
I read that and think about David, the storied shepherd boy who is the sole person in Israel brave enough to face the giant and tormenter Goliath, while a whole army cowers and loses a part of their collective soul—as well as their unique callings—as they do so. I grew up thinking the story was simply that: about a brave boy who believed God, faced a giant, and saved the day. It wasn’t until I was grown that I realized it’s a story about you and me. That Goliath shows up all the time, in all different ways, and we are constantly wrestling with the choice to face him or die one of the coward’s thousand deaths.
I think about Ruby Bridges and her family on the day she walked into a formerly all-white school in 1960, the first African American child to do so, championing desegregation in the midst of violent opposition (and going back to school the day after, and the day after that, etc). I think about her parents deciding that she would be the one. Ruby is not an idea, not an ideal, not a moral objective; she is their daughter, a child, their own flesh and blood, unique and exhaustible and precious and taught right away that bravery is worth the risk it demands.
I think about my friend who is kind and pure and lovely and has done just about everything right. She married a man who loved her until he decided he didn’t and left her with three young kids. And now she is in school, one she never dreamt of attending: How To Be A Single Parent; and How To Ask For Help; and Discovering Your Own Resilience; and Putting Your Children First; and How To Make Sure Your Kids Are Okay And You Have Custody Before You Start Therapy And Open Up the Dam You Built Around Your Emotions In Order To Survive These Past Six Months. Now I see her at birthday parties and she smiles and she says she is at peace and the wildest thing about this story is that I know she is telling me the truth.
I think about my friend who always thought she would be a mom, surely it was in the cards, surely we get to pick the cards, right? (right?). But now she is older than she’s ever been (though not old)—and nobody calls her mom. And she is curious and passionate and digging into life like it’s the Easter Egg Hunt my own children recently threw themselves into with all the passion of a shark once you’ve chummed the water. My oldest daughter limped around the day after, having actually pulled a muscle in her desperate search to find the prized Golden Egg (which she won; a full day of limping was worth it). My friend is vivacious and full-hearted and not sorry for herself and there are days when she limps, recovering from having thrown herself into life so wholeheartedly, no holds-barred, as they say.
To be alive is a chance to be brave. And it is not for me to say what that looks like for you, exactly. I recently read an essay by British writer and environmentalist, Paul Kingsnorth. His mind is a wonder to glimpse through his words, and he unabashedly talks about how many times he has changed his mind. He has learned and grown through being Buddhist then Wiccan and now he has, as he puts it, “come home” as an Orthodox Christian. The humility and courage it takes to wake up and wonder if perhaps you don’t see everything and maybe you’ve been worshipping the creation rather than the Creator all this time and could somebody tell a story that is truer than the one you believe is both challenging and beautiful.
When I tell my husband about someone who is wrong and he tells me that perhaps we are both wrong, I have to swallow my pride and then wonder if maybe his suggestion has merit. Maybe I don’t see as well as I’m sure I do. Maybe I should listen to what they are afraid of and what they love and maybe right and wrong will matter less than building a bridge to better understand them. It is brave to give voice to a question that isn’t so black and white and simple as who is wrong; it is brave to decide to ask a lot of questions before you tell someone why they’re wrong or that they’re wrong at all.
Tonight my four year old daughter Noa crept up the stairs at 10pm. This was wrong, but it was more than that—it was an opportunity for connection. I could have told her she was wrong to be up at this hour, or I could scoop her into my lap and listen to her. I chose the latter and discovered that her brain was bothering her with some thoughts. “Does this ever happen to you, mama?” she asked. I thought about the way my brain likes to play wrecking ball from time to time and I nodded. “Can we pray, Noa?” I asked her. After all prayer is not learned by telling, it’s learning by showing. So we prayed for peace to rule in her mind and for the sneaky thoughts to be silent and for sleep to come be her nighttime gift. I walked her downstairs and tucked her back in. “What was your favorite part of today?” I asked while she snuggled deep into her blankets. “You, mama,” she said, matter of fact, like it’s a casual thing to fall in love with your family.
There are many things we cannot choose—more than we ever realized when we were little. I thought the world was more like a choose-your-own-adventure book before I realized it is a tragedy. Now I’m convinced it’s both. Now I’m convinced of our own agency. I’m convinced that those early works by Homer—The Ilyiad and The Odyssey—are indicative of the sojourn that belongs to humanity. The perils might not be sea monsters (listen, I can’t say for sure that the Loch Ness monster is not nothing, so if you’re in Scotland, watch out), but my friends and I stay up late talking to each other about the perils that find us in our twenty-first century homes and lives and families. They are perils, nonetheless. And when we can face them, they become that big, awful, corporate sounding word that is as ugly as it is true: growth opportunities.
I’m convinced the Israelites going from slavery to the wilderness to the promised land is a journey that is ours to inhabit. I’m convinced that when the Israelites were terrified of the poisonous snakes that were killing them in the wilderness (not a sentence anyone should ever take lightly), and God’s method of healing was to, through Moses, instruct them to craft a golden snake, to face it and be healed—it’s a way of letting us know we can face what scares us. It’s called exposure therapy now, but God talked about it before any therapist did. Face Goliath, be free. Face the snakes, be healed. And then—and then!—Christ faces death itself. Puts on skin and all the needs that comes with being human and faces an enemy even more formidable than a giant, more persistent than snakes in the desert—and Christ makes captive the captor. “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)
There is something on the other side of bravery that can be ours, that should be ours. The specific tasks bravery demands of us doesn’t always look the same, but whatever comes of it—the freedom, healing, growth, resilience, peace, redemption—is always worth it.
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I’ve been to that school of divorce and rebirth. Well said, Jessica. 🙏