COURAGE...

In five days I will celebrate my 40th birthday...in Africa. I think of the months prior to our move and the words "you are courageous" bounce around in my head. I realize more than ever how we misunderstand true courage...how we mislabel unconditional love as acceptance. I read the international news today. I read about young girls 8-14 years of age being trained up in East Africa to perform sex acts in order to be sold or married off to men old enough to be their fathers and grandfathers. I think of how they have to wake up each morning to darkness when they should be basking in the warmth of the sun...COURAGE. I read about the history of genocide by Germany years ago in Nambia. I think of how they survived day after day in fear and under the oppression of the lie that they were not human...COURAGE. I read about Jesus appearing in a vision to an ISIS member and saying, "Follow Me", and he chooses to follow...COURAGE. I skim down and read about the Duggars and Bruce Jenner in America along with the surrounding opinions. The Duggars will have to recount the sins of their past for the jury known as social media. Bruce is to be honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. My heart aches, my spirit grieves and groans. Memories flash before me of my parents as they battled to take their last breaths of physical life with dignity, remembering as they had to release all control for others to care for them and for their Abba to receive them...COURAGE. I remember many patients and family members I have cared for in my 15 years of nursing...diverse cultures, diverse backgrounds...sleepless night after sleepless night for all as they journeyed through uncontrolled pain and spiritual anguish...COURAGE. I look across the fence of my new home and see a 6 year old with a 6 month old wrapped on his back, walking barefoot along the road, smiling, semi-trucks speeding by with what is left of their brakes...COURAGE. I sit across from a 13 year old girl as she holds her 4 month old sibling and updates us on the amount of diarrhea she has had the last 24 hours, we instruct her on what to do next and she intently listens...COURAGE.  The most courageous people I have seen in my short 40 years will have no celebrity status, no award ceremony, no social media status battles declaring unconditional love and acceptance between Christian and Secular, instead there will be money exchanged for child sex slaves, funerals for infants that have lived for months without even being given a name along with unmarked graves, there will be years of grief for those that cared for the sick and dying, deep emotional wounds for those survivors that are told the holocaust and genocide never happened...COURAGE, COURAGE, and more COURAGE. I end my day thanking the Lord for new perspective, true perspective, eternal perspective...JESUS...He was beaten and tortured for us, took the wrath, bore the shame, was mocked, and is still mocked...COURAGE. He is my COURAGE, Christ in Carla and nothing more.

"For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline."
  -2 Timothy 1:7