5 Minute Friday - Brave

Brave

Brash... Resourceful... Audacious... Valient... Enterprising

Bold... Resolute... Adventurous...Valourous... Enduring

Brassy... Reckless... Assertive... Vivid... Expectant

We've been watching episodes of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman over the past few months (a DVD of the entire series was Anna's birthday present back in December). The episode we watched tonight was one of the sadder, harder ones to watch as Dr. Mike makes a difficult decision to intubate, a new and controversial medical procedure, her sister who is sick with diptheria. She recovers from the diptheria only to die a few days later. The cause of her death? Pneumonia... a complication resulting directly from the intubation.

Dr. Mike and her mom struggle over who is to blame for the sister's death - yet at the end of the 2-part episode, as they reconcile over their differences regarding Dr. Mike's choices, her mom says:

"Making decisions is an important part of [any] job. Having the courage to choose a course of action... and to take it. There's a big difference between taking the blame and taking responsibility."

Those words have been playing over and over in my mind today, and are, I think, words divinely ordained for me to hear, on which I need to reflect. A Jesus follower, whether I'm wearing my hat as wife, mom, missionary, teacher, friend - daily I make decisions. I have to choose a course of action, follow through, and then accept responsibility for that decision and its consequences.

Refusing to decide... refusing to act - even that is a choice and, in a sense, an action that will have consequences, by default. This path leaves me feeling like a victim.

It is something we all have to do, like it or not.

It is a part of life that forces each one of us to be brave... sometime...

I pray to be able to see and encourage this bravery each day in the lives of those around me. 

I'm thankful for friends who choose to see and in so doing, help make me brave, too.

(added after the 5 minutes... just because I love it and I think it fits...)

"How could we forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples,

tmyths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses?

Perhaps all the dragons of lives are princesses

only waiting to see us,

once, beautiful and brave.

Perhaps everything terrible is,

in its deepest being,

something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened…

if a sadness rises before you,

larger than any you have ever known;

if a restiveness,

like light and cloud-shadows,

passes over your hands and over all you do.

You must think that something is happening with you,

that life has not forgotten you,

that it holds you in its hand;

it will not let you fall.”

~Ranier Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)