Bravery

Just this morning I was sitting in caribou and noticed some young girls around the ages of 3 and 4 playing on the floor near a steep edge, guarded by a railing. As I watched, the younger of the two girls leaned over to the other and whispered something into her ear. The older child then picked up her coloring book in one hand and extended her arm through the railing, suspending the coloring book into the air. As a bystander, you could guess a few things are happening at this point. Like many others, I immediately assumed that the older child was taunting her younger sister by threatening to drop her coloring book from the ledge but, what happened next came as a surprise to me. Their mom noticed what was happening and in a frustrated tone said, "Girls, get the coloring book out of there! What do you think you're doing?!"
The younger of the girls then replied to her mom by saying, "But mommy, I told her to be brave! She wasn't going to drop it".

Their mom didn't exactly see the bravery in hoisting a coloring book over a ledge, but many wouldn't. I began to think about what I had witnessed. As we get older, we seem to loose that sense of bravery. Maybe it's because we are worried what people would say about us, or we are afraid of failing. As a three year old we never worried about jumping off a ledge into our parents arms. We never worried about what our friends would think about what we wore. We never worried about being ourselves.

Later this morning in church we celebrated Veterans Day. We had a guest speaker that serves in the U.S. Marines as a chaplain. As he explained to us what our soldiers do everyday I realized what that little girl meant by being brave. Being brave is exactly what these men and women do every single day for our freedom. It can be a little different for each one of us and sometimes it takes being child like to notice what being brave really means. For that little girl, it was the chance of sacrificing her coloring book and for a soldier, it's the chance at sacrificing their life.

Opportunities come every single day to be brave. Choose to be more like that little girl, and DARE to do something new!


Stationed By the Rising Sun,
Shawna Conrad