Embracing courage

I am taking my life back. For too many years, I have been a slave to what I thought were circumstances beyond my control. Nothing could save me from the hell that was imposed upon me by myself and others. Blaming early hardships and traumas no longer works. Passing off responsibility for current action to my inability to function because of what others had done to me and taught me don't minimize the effects of what I have done that have put me in the middle of the maelstrom that is my life.

For a long time, God sustained me, but that loose attempt at having a supreme being act as my motivator hasn't allowed me to truly grow into being responsible for my life; instead, it placed the responsibility, again, on someone or something else.

But now, in the face of absolute failure, on a scale that I can scarcely comprehend, and in a place where the fear of financial ruin and physical death consume my mind (rightly so), I have found an answer.

The answer is not one that has come lightly. It has come after years of searching, praying, reading, psychologizing, medicating, begging and pleading. It has come in the simple words of Nelson Mandela, who spoke to me through a one-page article in a small magazine, about how he survived 27 years in prison, how he went against all the odds for what he believed in to lead a nation, how he has become one of the world's icons for strength.

He used one word: "courage."

Courage, he said, is not the absence of fear. If anyone knows fear, it is Mandela. Beaten and threatened with death, and with the death of his family, locked away for decades not for something he did, but for what he felt and believe. Having no faith that he would ever live to see freedom.

No, Mandela said, courage is not the absence of fear. It is persevering in spite of the fear. Moving forward and pressing onward while looking fear in the face.

I have found my motivator. No longer do I seek to dispel the fear, thinking that if I did, I would succeed, have peace, and prosper. Now, I have decided to embrace the fear, and press on despite it.

It is working more than I ever thought. Things have changed. I have changed. And, I believe, courage will be my salvation.