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I am going to tell on myself here, and I hope you all can forgive me. I blog a day early, set the publish time for the next morning and I am usually not even online when my blog hits the screen. It’s not scandalous like lip-syncing to my own voice at a concert or anything. It does feel just a tad deceptive on my end though. I am a very “what you see is what you get” kind of woman, so I felt it would be good to come clean and confess my pre-blogging habits. I don’t do it all the time everywhere, but I do it here every Sunday evening and post it on Monday morning (that also gives me time to come in and read Julie’s blog which I happen to enjoy quite well!)

Confessions of early blogging is not what I wanted to say about courage, but I wanted to mention it because last Monday morning when my blog appeared on the screen here at VAJoe’s I was under anesthesia and in the thick of surgery. Last Monday morning I had to have a complete hysterectomy and I have been lying low trying to recover. The surgery was tough but successful. I feel like I am handling the recovery very wisely — which is to say I am doing nothing but taking care of myself and taking it very easy.

So, with that being said, I wanted to post an entry today that I wrote a while back about courage and my own struggle to understand exactly what courage is, how it’s displayed and whether or not I possess any of my own. Have a blessed week, and I am sure that within the next couple of weeks I will be up and at ‘em and back to my old self. Actually, I think I will be even better!

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When I was in undergrad as a BSW major I dabbled in Philosophy. I was just one class away from being able to declare it as my minor, but decided against taking that last class due to overload. The final semester for a BSW consists of a full time internship, and the very nature of social work is working with client populations that have major stress factors attached at every angle. Also, at this point in my education I had become very disenchanted with the study of Philosophy. It seemed as if there was too much value placed on who could ask the most profound question instead of who could provide anyone with the most profound evidence.

This frustration with academic Philosophy hit a peak for me when I was told during a class that there was no way to prove that evil truly exists. Well, to be quite honest in the convoluted vacuum of Metaphysics there is no way to prove that any of us exists. OK, so now that we are all just a figment of one another’s imaginations maybe we can all agree on something! That was my hope, but the questions would just get more bizarre, and to be honest at that time I couldn’t bring myself to care about the the impracticality in the study anymore. I was taking care of young children in the field of mental health whose minds, bodies, and little spirits had been ravaged by adults who possessed nothing in the lines of a soul or a conscience. I remember the statement “You can’t prove that evil exists!” when I read the file of a young girl who had not said a word in years, but rather barked like a dog because being a puppy was better and safer than being a baby girl. Don’t tell me evil does not exist!

Then I remember hearing the arguments around human characteristics and attributes. Of course there were many discussions around the subjectivity of human experiences like love and death. We even discussed courage one day. I don’t remember the entire discussion around courage. I think I may have nodded off to sleep for a moment. Courage was a word to those in the class that meant everything from being strong enough to voice your stance on an issue, to wearing your hair green if you wanted to. I think that they got the term courage and pluckiness confused. Dying your hair green does not take sacrifice and love. Voicing your opinion may or may not. I found the whole topic disturbing, and it still bothers me to this day. What is courage if it is not the things that were discussed in my class that day? Being a dual military family, and having the incredible privilege to know other military wives and parents has given me the opportunity to understand courage a little more. Here are some acts of courage that I have been blessed to witness:

Courage is the young soldier who packs his ruck diligently to head over to the Middle East. He may be scared, but his heart is strong and he faces his fears with the reassurance that he has been prepared adequately and his family is behind him.

Courage is displayed by the wife who kisses her husband good-bye for the last time before the sand from that distant and dangerous place will kiss his face for a year, or more. She will walk away broken hearted and full of fear, but she will smile at her kids and act like she just knows that he will be fine — even when she doesn’t know it for sure in her heart.

Courage is evident in the young person who walks into the Recruiters station ready to say the words “I want to serve.” Knowing that our Country is at war, and that the chances of deployment are imminent does not stop the desire to fulfill his duty. Actually, those threats make his desire to serve all the more strong.

Courage is witnessed by those around the young soldier’s mother when he is deployed. She hangs her yellow ribbon on her tree, she will talk to anyone who will listen, and she will defend his mission with every fiber in her body. She knows that even in the face of doubts and arguments about the war, her son must hear words of encouragement and words of belief in order for his morale to stay high.

Courage is the single father who is watching his young son prepare for deployment. He is both proud and mortified, and he aches to be with his son in battle. He has never been known to sit back idly while his children tread where danger is, but this time he must. He will pack care packages and send a cigar once in a while to say to his beloved son “I know you are a capable man!”

Courage is the American who refuses to collapse and be crippled in the face of threats of terrorism. It is the American who remembers vividly the pictures, sounds and smells of where she was on September 11, 2001, but still refuses to live in dread. It is the American who dug his heals into the ground and decided resolutely that day that he would not stop seeing his loved ones on the opposite coast and he would not stop his career because it involved flying. He faces his fear and adversity with a stone resolve.

Courage is evident in the husband and wife who decide that it is a sacrifice worth making for him to stay an extra tour instead of coming home when planned. That extra year of sacrifice will be a difficult path to walk, but they face their adversity together and cling to the hope of reunification.

I still can not define exactly what courage is, but I can recognize it when I see it. I am coming to understand that courage can not ever be divorced from love, commitment, and morality. They are all individual strands, but part of the same braid. You have to love with your whole heart before you can truly display courage. You have to commit yourself to the task at hand immediately and completely so you will not waiver when the sea of trial tosses you around. Courage may seem like a subjective experience or idea, but I can recognize it and admire it, and sometimes I am even able to emulate it.

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