Five-minute Friday: Brave

 

Recycling this picture from my last post...

I think of my mom, living on her own for the first time in her sixty years, coming home to an empty house, learning to find her way through uncharted waters.

Of my brother in-law's mom, beginning the battle against breast cancer, how it cuts away but cannot take her beauty.

I think of my grandma, looking back on her nine decades of life and choosing to continue to grow and become, until she takes her final breath.  

Of the sixty-year old man I met in a wheelchair at the nursing home, wearing a smile on his face even as he tells me how he came home from the hospital with only one leg after an operation that went bad; of how he works out every day and hops around with a cane under one arm to build strength.

I think of my beautiful friend, struggling each day through the darkness of depression and illness and grief, how she gets up out of bed most days and shows up to love on her little son anyway.

Of my husband, coming here from Mexico nine years ago with fifty dollars and so little English, working labor job after labor job and building life again from the ground up.  

I think of my friend in our community group, a resident at Children's Hospital, pouring her heart into her work to serve families, many with children fighting to live, how she keeps that heart open to the pain of love.

Of all the souls I know and love, who get out of bed in the morning when sometimes this is the hardest thing; who get through the day breath upon breath, prayer upon prayer.

I think of the ones who are willing to break, to bare their souls in the presence of another, or even in written words; who offer a glimpse of grief and wrestling and questions and healing, in process, and let us see their journey of hope.

All the ones who offer sacrifices of gratitude as life storms around and inside them and things come crashing down.

I think of all these.

Of how many forms "brave" can take.


Joining Lisa Jo for a FMF post to the theme of Brave.