Hello, tender friends!
I really enjoy being alive, even on rough days. I remember vibing with Henry Fleming when reading The Red Badge of Courage my freshman year of high school. Of course he doesn’t want to die! I thought. I wouldn’t either!
When people talk about mortal bravery, I tend to feel sad that I don’t have it.
But I struggle even when there is no mortal danger. I struggle when I feel God is leading me to confront people and things go badly when I do. I feel like I’m in mortal danger and have to fight defaulting to people pleasing mode to keep the people around me happy.
I have always thought that if God had given me the leading to confront someone, it meant that he was going to make them receptive to the message and things would go well and easily for me. But that has never actually happened, in either personal or professional situations. No matter how much I prayed beforehand, people have consistently lashed out when confronted.
This week I read a commentary on the story of David and Goliath that spoke to me and has made me reframe a lot of these situations. The commentator said that he disagrees with teaching children that David was brave. Instead, he believes we should be teaching them that David prioritized what God prioritized. It had less to do with being brave and more to do with saying, “I’m going to do this because it’s important to God.” The commentator focused less on David’s courage and more on the fact that he was offended on God’s behalf.
This is so much easier for me to get behind. It’s helping me to stop berating myself for not feeling brave in these circumstnaces.
It’s also helping me to fear people’s reactions less because I’m focusing more on asking whether or not the thing that’s bothering me is important to God or not. If it is, it’s worth the discomfort.
It’s hard to overcome the social conditioning that happens, either in childhood or as a female, that teaches you to remain quiet. I have spent a lot of my life praying that God would remove me from uncomfortable situations because it’s preferable to being forced to speak up. But if God continues to present me with these situations, rather than removing the discomfort for me, there must be a reason.
So, cheers to enduring discomfort for the indeterminate future. Cheers to enduring the awkward discomfort while focusing on whether or not God wants me to proceed as I feel he’s led me instead of wondering why he hasn’t made it a little easier.
Ok, that’s all for today, tender friends! Thank you for stopping by, and thank you for sharing!
You can read more about how this blog got started at the welcome page.
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