Courage!

A long time ago, during a life transition, I was staying in a challenging household situation.  I began walking an hour every single morning, rain or shine in order to make this situation work for me, because changing the situation was not immediately possible.  After perhaps 6 months of walking in the dark, the cold and even the rain a car stopped, the window rolled down and the woman inside spoke to me.  She told me that she had been watching me every morning for those 6 months and that she thought I was a very courageous person.  The encouragement of her viewpoint kept me going another 6 or 8 months longer.  I looked up the word courage in the dictionary.Websters defines courage as: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.  At that time, I did not consider myself very courageous.  I had just left my exhusband which resulted in my loosing contact with my 2 young children.  I felt beat down and exhausted from emotional stress at that time and my current living situation, though better, was a different flavor of emotional stress.  During that year, I got a job picking flowers on a daffodil farm.  I was paid only for the tiny bunches of 10 daffodil buds held together with a rubber band.  I was paid either 10 or 20 cents a piece, I don´t recall exactly, though it wasn´t much.  I learned to enjoy the process of being paid for what I personally was able to do.  I wasn´t paid for my ability to think better than someone else or my ability to fight  harder to win some possition.  I was paid simply for what I actually and physically did.  I loved that job.  I loved the walking, the solitude while working, the lunch time comradere with the latino seasonal workers.  The lunch time nap in the grass was heavenly.  I loved myself.  I grew stronger in the knowledge that I was like other people.  I was capable.  I was normal.  and I was couragous for getting up every morning, walking in the dark until I woke up, returning, eating the same ole oatmeal, showering, going to the farm, being blessed to wander each day through those beautiful yellow green fields.  Seeing my work pile up at the end of the rows and knowing that I would be rewarded for my efforts.  


Courage...


As I travel alone again.  
Seeing the empty bed of a friend yet another morning, as I continue my journey....
Courage as I explore what I want for the next little bit....as I remember who I was, who I am, who I want to be....


Courage to breathe when breathing seems so hard on those days when someone tells you that you are not okay by thier definition.  Courage to challenge the blocks that are a disability - courage to continue to wake up, to walk, to smile, to step off the preverbial cliff. (or climb one - okay I will save that AT story for another time)


What are your courage stories...share in comments won´t you!