Finding Courage

My heart is turned towards a friend this week, and her family, as they struggle with a nearly unbearable challenge. Watching a loved one with a debilitating illness slowly slip away is the domain of the courageous, if such a place exists. It seems to me that courage is key to getting through such ordeals. And those who have suffered in such a way, will readily say they haven't had a choice: they've simply had to summon up the courage.

The word "courage" has as its Latin root "cor", meaning "heart". When I consider the courage needed to face such an ordeal, it always points to the love. We find the courage because we love. It's as simple as that. We face an ordeal we would never choose, and which seems too much to bear if we think about it hard enough, because we love. We love the person who is dying. And we love other family members who are also struggling to see this loved one suffer. So, we find the courage for them.

When I spoke to this friend this morning, she expressed the experience she, her husband and their children are all having: that they are being robbed. They are being robbed of more meaningful years with a dear husband and father. He is being robbed of time with these loved ones. One wants to blame someone or something, and that is part of the hardship. There is really no one to blame. The blame is, perhaps, a diversion to keep us from facing our own pain.

The crucible of such pain is hard to face indeed. If I lack courage, it is in the prospect of accepting pain. That doesn't mean I haven't faced it time and again, as is the lot of being human. I face it, but I feel like I would run a thousand miles around the thing that might bring pain rather than face it. We never really get to do this, though. If we try to run away, we are dogged by the thing. It simply manifests in some other way. There is no way out but through.

I am entering into a trying time right now, in a way, as I recall the events of a year ago, when my mother was in her final decline. It was a year ago that we visited her, and Brian and the girls saw her for the last time. I was to see her one more time after that visit. It was poignant, bitter-sweet. Each visit felt like it might be the last. Goodbyes, for me, especially of this sort, are so painful, I would run a thousand miles to avoid them. But, I knew I had to spend that moment, each time, with my mother, and tell her I loved her and say goodbye.

Where do we find the courage to face such pain? I am still looking for the answer to that one. Where do women find the courage to face the pain of giving birth? When we decide to love, and commit to another - whether our own children, or a spouse - where do we find the courage? There are no guarantees. Our hearts swell with love for these people, and something could take them tomorrow, and we know from past experience, that the pain of such loss would be unbearable.

I believe it is quite all right to shake our fists at God, when the pain of such loss is so great, when we feel so bitterly robbed, and watch others around us robbed, while a loved one slips away, sometimes in terrible pain. I have shaken my fist of God. He did not smite me in response.

However we come through painful episodes in our lives, kicking and screaming, or with grace and serenity, we do seem, ultimately, to reap benefits from coming through these fires. I love the image of the blacksmith, holding in the fire the iron for just the right amount of time, until it can be molded into an instrument of beauty or utility, or maybe both. It's a useful image for the alchemy of tests.

Tests ripen us. Tests teach us about things we may never have learned otherwise. Tests, it seems to me, bring us more into the centre of the fold of humanity. We understand a little more about the ordeals of another who had gone through something we are living right now, and this teaches us compassion. We become a beacon of hope in the future to another person facing a similar ordeal: we have gotten through it; we are okay now; this friend will also weather this storm and will be all right.

Besides this family facing such a time of crisis, I lie awake at night and can think of too many friends and family members suffering in a host of ways right now. And the experience of thinking about them is overwhelming, until I remember a prayer I have memorized:

"Is there any remover of difficulties, save God? Say: Praised be God. He is God. All are His servants and all abide by His bidding."

Somehow, I am understanding this prayer in a more profound way recently. It is not for us to shoulder the burdens of other people's sorrows. At best, we are only instruments for God's love and mercy. We do not remove the difficulties. God does. It has become my constant mantra: "Is there any remover of difficulties, save God?" The more I repeat this praise, the more I feel lightness descend (in both of senses of the word). He, the source of all love, has the whole world in His hands.

There is that old chestnut: "It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all." Embedded in this truism, it seems to me, is the idea that it takes courage to love.

And it takes love to be courageous.