brave is trendy, and I like it

Is there a better place than the ocean to teach your babies about bravery?

When I first started dreaming up Just Enough Brave’s title around this time last year, I swear I felt like I was a pioneer.  Brave was the word God had put on my heart months before as I sat in a room full of women and told them about my very real ache for women working in the sex industry.  I told this crew with something I would call a false confidence (meaning I sounded more ready than I was) that one day, ONE DAY, I was going to do something about it.  I was finally going to be brave.  It was a liberating moment for me: putting my words out there to people other than my husband felt like instant accountability.

And it felt like I was on to something with my writing, too.  The wordsmith-ing geek that lives inside of me went to town with the semantics.  I loved the idea of being brave.  I am obsessed with the concept of biblical justice.  Just. Brave.  Well that sounded perfect.  Just Brave would have been the title but it was taken on the domain purchasing list, and then I added a qualifier and no one in internet land had thought of it before, and it became mine!  Just Enough Brave! I was going to pioneer a brave movement!  I am so creative with my words!  Everyone will want to be brave when they read them!  And everyone will love me!  And think I am brave myself!

{You are certainly free to start laughing here}.

And then this year, brave was everywhere.  It showed up in songs, on book titles, on my instagram feed and in Christian-women-blog-circles the world over.  I even saw a facebook status from a sweet writer whom I respect to no end and it said something along the lines of “this ‘brave’ trend is rubbing me the wrong way.”  And I realized, much to my dismay, I’m actually not the first person who has wanted to be brave.

Most of the months of March, April and May of this year are a blur of me laying on the couch with a bowl nearby.  Pregnancy just had its way with me.  But those months were hard for other reasons, too: I just had too much darn time and space to think about myself.  And so much thinking about yourself is simply not good.  My inner monologue was something like this: you should stop writing.  Who reads what you write, anyway?  Ok, maybe you should keep writing but at least change the title of the blog.  It is far from the original, creative namesake you thought it would be, anyway.  Actually, free yourself from this insecurity.  Hang up the words, girlfriend.  There are enough better ones out there.  On and on it went.  On and on it still goes, to be honest. 

Since last summer, my sweet friend and I have been visiting women working in a local strip club once a month and trying to show them just a tiny glimpse of care with coffee and trail mix and Swedish fish.  Last Saturday, as Jordan and I drove to our destination, I said to her, “You know, this still takes bravery for me.  Even though it has been almost a year, I have to remind myself God is here, that this is obedience, and that he loves those girls so much it is worth my fear to get out of the car and love them, too.”  Jordan agreed, and because she is just awesome, prayed a beautiful prayer and in we went.  An inner dialogue so similar to the one I have over writing usually happens as we walk to the club: who are you?  What are you even doing here, you can hardly relate to these girls at all.  You’ve been coming for months now and nothing has really changed for these girls yet, focus your time elsewhere.  On and on.

When I get inside my own head too much, I can convince myself of a whole lot of things.  That brave is too trendy.  That writing is not worth it.  That my personal brave is doing very little for the world so it doesn’t even count.  But you know, God has been so sweet to teach me something as I emerged from my feel sorry for me I’m so sick weeks, and that is there is never going to be too much brave going around.  Not in words.  Not in deeds.  Just look around, do you think the world needs a few less brave people?  No.  Having too many brave people around is not our problem.

Our problem is that it is just flat out hard to be brave.  It’s hard to share vulnerable words with the world. It’s hard to tell a story about women working in the sex industry that is quite opposite from the one much of the Christian church believes.  It’s hard to volunteer to raise babies who are not biologically yours and may join your family with a whole host of scars from their own.  It’s hard to move your family to a brand new place.  It’s hard to give away your time, money, and possessions.  It is hard to do a lot of things that God asks us to do.

But here’s what I know: he does ask something brave of all of us.  And this brave is a lot of things: it’s challenging and it’s scary, but it just must come with the sweetest feeling of grace once it has done its work in us—I don’t know, because I’m not there yet myself.  But there are also a few things it’s not: it’s not a competition, it’s not a judgment, it’s not a show, and it is certainly not the same thing for everyone.  Brave is between me and Jesus, and between you and Jesus.  He simply will not ask me about anyone else when my life ends and I get to meet him.  Such a beautifully freeing truth. 

So I don’t know, but maybe brave feels trendy because we are finally catching on to this idea, that God really has a brave thing for us.  And we’re talking about it, trying it on and doing our best to make it real.  Many of us are fumbling our way there (can you see my hand raised over here?), but gosh, we are trying.  Perhaps this is a time and place in history when we really see that playing it safe and building only a life of comfort is just not working. 

Could it be that it feels like brave is everywhere because, well, it is supposed to be?

Let brave be trendy. In fact, jump unabashedly on the band wagon.  Because if you be brave, then I will be brave, too.