I’m not even going to pretend that my youngest child hasn’t been treated differently than his three older siblings. The thing with babies of the family is that they don’t have another small human stealing their mother’s attention. Unlike the others, he was the only one that shared any stint of time being the only one in diapers. Despite the fact that he is the same age as my others when they started pre-k (even a couple months older than two of them), he just feels much younger. Sending the last one to day 1 of pre-k just hurt a little differently.
The first two days were packed full of excitement and he was nothing but thrilled to be left in this new place. Days 3-7 were packed full of tears and sadness and it took everything I had not to say, “ah…we’ll try again next year. He’s just a tiny baby.” But we persisted!
On day 8 he walked into my bathroom as I was getting ready and said, “Momma! Today I’m going to walk in my class brave!”
He did just that.
He made up his mind that he was going to walk courageously and he did.
In the face of grief or pain or fear or life circumstances that we didn’t choose, how do we walk? Do we chose to “walk brave” because we know God is with us or do we tend to crumble…or maybe it’s a solid mixture of both.
I’m guessing most often people don’t wake up and choose infertility, loss, an unwanted divorce, death, brokenness, cancer, you name it. But we can choose to persist in the midst of a situation that could have led us to crumble. They chose to keep baby stepping through the struggle. They can choose to walk brave.
This summer on two separate occasions weeks apart, the boys both stumbled upon “scary” movies. As they crawled into our bed on separate nights they both said, “I can’t get that scary guy out of my mind.”
Sometimes the scary guy isn’t the creepy looking old man cartoon. Or the extremely scary grey skinned zombie type figure. The scary thing may be what’s coming, what’s not coming, or the unknown…and our minds can start running rampant with fear. The bible says we can take our thoughts captive. The bible says we are His! What a comfort!
Isaiah 43: 1-3 says:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
What a hope we have in Jesus.
Regardless of where you find yourself right now, whether your on the mountaintops or in the valley, walk brave!
I’ll leave you with the wise words of J: “Jesus is strong. Jesus [d]efeat him. Jesus [d]efeat the bad guys in my brain.”