A Choice for Courage

Kate Gulden was dying from that raucous disease we call cancer. Her husband, unable to deal with the situation ordered his adult daughter to come home from her high powered job in New York and to take care of her mother. The daughter was bumfuddled by this request. Was it not his job? He was her husband. He lived there! She did not!

It didn't take long for the daughter to choose to leave her work, her boyfriend, and return home to care for her mother. She learned to really cook and do the domestic tasks but somewhere along the way she also got a glimpse of her seemingly stellar father. She deduced that he was having an affair and she knew there was no way that she could tell her mother. When Kate noticed that some thing was wrong she inquired of her daughter who refused to confess what she knew. Then Kate said to her, "There is nothing that you know about your father that I don't know about him." She went on to tell her daughter that when you live with someone that many years, you make a choice--and sometimes a courageous choice. You accept them for all that they are and with whatever baggage they bring. In her words, you "choose to love what you have."

The daughter would learn later that her father was having an affair with alcohol and she chose to learn her mother's lesson. While the scene is only a movie known as One True Thing, it demonstrates the courage required to truly be family to one another. A person living out of the levels of force, when given Kate's situation, might easily have run away. But courage is the transition point to power.

Whatever challenges and changes life brings, at this lowest level of power, one has the ability to explore, to be determined, to learn new things, to be willing to face oneself and one's fears and to grow as a result. Life challenges to anyone living out of the forceful levels that we've examined thus far would be seen as frightening, frustrating, sad and hopeless. A person of courage chooses to look at life through a lens that says, "ride the wave, embrace the adventure." Courage is the level where productivity begins. So whether that's attempting a new sport, starting a new job or choosing to love what (and who) you have, this level invites us to empowerment.

In the stressors of our days, in the face of our self-imposed expectations for what our lives should be, in the face of all manner of opportunities, we have a choice for courage. May courage empower us to new heights this day! Amen.