Courage
Each morning I pick a word to focus on from a pile of characteristics considered important for a quality life. It has been interesting since I started this how the word fits the day. My word today is courage and I find myself being a bit more cautious today.
I have courage in many areas of my life. Mice don't scare me, I have gotten much less afraid of snakes ( this is made easier since that child who always wanted snakes has moved to her own place), handling a pistol no longer freaks me out, I can speak before crowds and make road trips by myself.
Saturday evening I put a bag of garbage out on the front porch for the hubby to carry to the can when he got home. Thirty minutes later I looked out the front window to see a very large bear on my front porch testing my leftovers. I ran and grabbed my camera. I forgot to turn off the flash so no close ups but lest you be sad I ran out the door, off the porch and was about 25 feet away when I took this photo.
I can't really tell you if it is courage or stupidity but if the bear had not run off after this photo I would have stepped closer and closer to get a clearer photo. Courage I think is recognizing your fear and then looking it in the face and taking a step toward it, and then another and another. Like my bear, that thing you fear will eventually disappear.
I will add here that if my daughter is reading this she will be saying " Ya Mom but there was this one time.... in an airplane....". Our family went up in a small plane to get photos of a piece of property. Kurt was going to parachute out. The rest of us had to put on parachutes for the just in cases, at which point I said I would rather go down with the plane and take my chances then jump. In retrospect Jenn, perhaps it was not that first step that scared me as much as the lack of a second step? That was many years ago and I am much more well versed in taking steps toward what I fear and I have noticed that as I get closer and things become more clear that thing I feared is not so big and scary. With any luck you will be able to laugh about it later like: Saturday night was pizza and bear night at my house.
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