Courage to Continue

Celebration days, no matter the joy surrounding them, can be treacherously hollow with missing faces. 
Some seasons it takes a lot of courage to live. 
It is my privilege to know many heroic people.   One baked pies for family this week; eight years ago she had her last Thanksgiving with her teenage daughter.   Another cleaned house and prepared for the homecoming of college students on her first holiday without parents.   A missionary served a celebratory dinner while four of her children were filling their plates with traditional fare on a separate continent.
Sometimes bravery is found in the act of simply carrying on.  It is the husband who continues to work day after day knowing that it isn’t enough to keep up with the cost of a home and electricity and heat and food, but it is the only thing he can do.  Or the student who spends years juggling classes and the full-time job that pays for tuition.  Or the parent ready to pick up the phone at any hour, through decades of heartbreak or silence. 

One of the world’s favorite literary characters is Atticus Finch, the lawyer and father Harper Lee endowed with integrity and honor.  A widower, the primary purpose of his life was raising children amidst the social unrest of the South during the Great Depression, and imparting truth to his young son and daughter.
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.  Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her… She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Two years ago a bride of six months had her leg, ankle and foot broken in an accident.  Many of her newlywed dreams came to a crashing end as she needed help cooking, cleaning and even bathing.  Her recovery required commitment and grueling therapy.  This Thanksgiving Day she participated in a 15K race for which she had trained months.  Conquering the first four miles of uphill climbing, she began to falter when the road pitched downward and the pain in her foot increased.   As she slowed from the disability, a runner tapped her shoulder. “I followed you up the hill and you got me here; you are not walking.”
Forty minutes later they congratulated each other at the finish line.

It takes courage to live out the details and the rituals of life regardless of circumstances. There is bravery in participating in spite of grief and loss.   I am thankful for these heroes – husbands, wives, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers and friends who “see it through no matter what.”
Their example, despite weakness or sorrow, is often what God uses to get me up the hill.

All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.   Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.    Hebrews 11