Courage

I was there, but I don’t remember any of the details. And, I wonder now about what it must have been like for her: Two children already, and not even a year since her husband who had separated from her had returned and moved her 1000 miles away from her family to an isolated town in Eastern Oregon. She had to find new friends and build a life in one rented house after another. How could she not have felt alone and overwhelmed? And then I came along. I don’t think I ever really appreciated all that she did…but I remember…living in houses without running water, holding my forehead when I was sick, early mornings getting us off to school, or out the door at 6 AM to work as a family in the strawberry and bean fields of Western Oregon, uprooted again from all friends to an isolated house built on a dirt foundation, with a kitchen sink that drained into a trough under the house. She was not perfect; she was demanding. She inherited her father’s capacity to see things one way…her way. She could sling the words right back at her husband as good as any lumberjack. But, she did teach me to pray, and to never use those words myself! And, eventually, slowly, Jesus seeped into her life and made changes. And she had to put up with 4 boys…boys who would pull practical jokes on her like squirting Ketchup on one another to simulate blood, boys that would sass back. Then I got involved in my own life…and she was gone way too early, 25 years ago next month. And although I took the opportunity to thank her, I’m not sure I really took the opportunity to truly appreciate her. I tended to focus too much on negatives. But she did contribute 50% of my genetic pool. And God used her to shape my life way more than that in many ways that I don’t even realize.

I think of great women of courage: Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony. But I also think of a woman who had daily courage…who lived strong in spite of poverty, who stuck with a husband who threw away his false teeth and lived without them, who cooled off their arguments with a pail of water. My mother forged a life during difficult days. She taught me about courage.

It takes courage to stand strong in the story life deals you and to stay at it even when it is difficult and nothing goes the way you planned. God has a story for all of us. It contains challenges and risks. We are faced with almost daily temptations to take the easy way out. We go through many days when it seems like we are walking alone. But, when you look back, you see God’s footprints beside yours. That’s the story of a Woman of courage named Hadassah. You know her by her Persian name, Esther. Her story and her most famous words call us to courage: "I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish."4:16

We are tempted to take the easy road. God calls us to the hard road. We are tempted to take the safe road. God calls us to the risky road. God shows up in our lives only when we are on the risky, hard road called “perishing.” Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. John 12:24