Introspection: The Courage I Seek

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The Courage I Seek

I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9 (NRSV)

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough

Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up

Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?

Remind me once again just who I am, because I need to know

From "You Say" by Lauren Daigle

As I've stated previously, I have decided to focus on cultivating courage this year.  The specific kind of courage I seek is not the kind of courage that would enable me to strap on a parachute and jump out of a plane or to attach a bungee cord to myself and jump off a bridge.  I can live a perfectly happy and fulfilling life without doing such things.  The kind of courage I seek is courage of the heart.  I want the courage to be myself, to put myself out there, to express my feelings for someone, to assert myself, to say things that need to be said, and to face criticism.  I want the courage to get myself unstuck in life.

Basically, the kind of courage I seek is the kind of courage marked by vulnerability.

When I completed The Authenticity Challenge last month, I did not know what the next step in my year of courage should be, so I decided to learn about the kind of courage I seek.  I know of no better person to teach me about vulnerability than Brené Brown.  A friend of mine recently mentioned Brown's book Daring Greatly, which I had started reading a few years ago, so I decided to start reading it again to see what it could teach me about the kind of courage I seek.

Brené Brown defines vulnerability as "uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure."¹  These are the kind of things to which I have become adverse and the kind of things I want the courage to face.  Vulnerability is, according to Brown, "the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity" and "the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity."²  "Vulnerability," she writes, "sounds like truth and feels like courage."³

If I am to cultivate the kind of courage I seek, I will need to embrace vulnerability.  Embracing vulnerability will mean becoming unguarded and opening myself up to the possibility of unpleasant things like failure, criticism, and rejection.  Brené Brown writes, regarding her own experience, "In a culture full of critics and cynics, I had always felt safer in my career flying right under the radar."⁴  I can certainly relate to her in this regard.  From time to time, I complain about the low number of page views my blog posts receive, yet, at the same time, I don't like promoting them.  I also tend to play it safe, withholding the thoughts I think might be more controversial out of fear of being eviscerated by people who are either more conservative or more progressive than I.

Brené Brown notes that three of the common forms of proverbial "armor" people use to protect themselves from vulnerability are "foreboding joy," perfectionism, and numbing.⁵  For me, these kinds of armor have taken the forms of assuming the worst, hiding my faults, and retreating into busyness, fantasies, and other distractions.

Last year, I focused on cultivating self-worth, and I've suspected that courage and self-worth might somehow be connected.  I've recently learned that I cannot be courageous without a stable sense of self-worth.  Brené Brown points out that, if a person does not have a stable sense of self-worth, then she might attach her self-worth to what she sets out to do.  Because her self-worth is dependent on her success, she will either be less willing to take risks or be personally devastated if the results are not what she hopes they are.⁶  Brown writes, "When our self-worth isn't on the line, we are far more willing to be courageous and risk sharing our raw talents and gifts."⁷

I confessed last year that I have a fear of dating.  The reason is that, in the past, I unknowingly attached my self-worth to my desirability, thereby allowing the romantic rejection I faced to negatively impact my self-worth.  Nowadays, I don't express any romantic interest in women because I don't want to feel like I'm worthless if they don't share my feelings.

Vulnerability - the willingness to face risk and exposure - and worthiness - the belief that one is enough - are two important components of what Brené Brown calls wholeheartedness.⁸  Brown found in her research that there is one key difference between people who experience love and belonging and people who don't: "Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging."⁹  Basically, if I'm going to get myself unstuck and pursue what I want in life, I have to believe that I'm actually worthy of it.

I still struggle with worthiness.  For much of my journey of faith, I was not taught that I was worthy of anything good.  I was taught that, because I am a sinner, I am not worthy of anything but eternal suffering.  More recently, I have begun to think of my faith as a source of self-worth.  My friend Laura, who was my pastor for a number of years, still likes to remind me of my identity as a beloved child of God.

One of my favorite Bible stories is the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  In this story, a father has two sons.  The younger son requests his inheritance, moves far away from home, and squanders all he has.  Impoverished, he returns home and tries to apologize to his father.  The father won't listen to his son's apology because he is too busy planning a welcome-home party.  The older son, who has been working hard while his brother was out "living his best life," is angry that his father is treating his brother so graciously while seemingly ignoring his own hard work and faithfulness.¹⁰

The moral of the story is twofold.  The father in the story, of course, represents God.  His treatment of his rebellious younger son shows us that there is nothing bad we can do to make God love us less.  His treatment of his older son shows us that there is nothing good we can do to make God love us more.  Our identity and our worth are not up for debate.  We are children of God, whom God dearly loves.  Like any loving parent, God wants what is best for us, so we are indeed worthy of things like love and belonging.

Though I still struggle to believe that I'm worthy of the things I want in life, I do believe that I am no less worthy of them than anyone else who has them.  I suppose that my next step in my year of courage should be to start trusting that I am enough and to start doing some of the things I have been hesitant to do.  You will see one of these things on this blog in the coming weeks.

May you, dear reader, trust in your worth as a beloved child of God, and may this trust lead you to live courageously.


Notes:

1. Brené Brown.  Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.  2012, Gotham.  p. 34
2. ibid.
3. Brown, p. 37
4. Brown, p. 14
5. Brown, p. 117
6. Brown, p. 63
7. Brown, p. 64
8. Brown, p. 29
9. Brown, p. 11
10. Luke 15:11-32

The photograph of the plant growing through asphalt was taken by me in May 2016 in the driveway at my grandmother's house.