About the picture: This was taken somewhere in my home, and is a part of the “Big Reveal” happening in Mid-April 2012.  Stay tuned!

I’m not-so-silently grumbling because I’m in IHOP blogging tonight, considering everyone decided to be at Starbuck’s (boooooooo)!  Were they thinking they were gonna get a cup of coffee?!  Onward with this week’s post.

How wonderful would it be if the older we got, the more courage we acquired?  At least it’d be wonderful for me, but that’s not how life works.  For much of my life, I have battled the absence of much courage.  If you couple that with people’s words living “rent free” in your head, you’ll have a disaster cocktail recipe (experience is speaking here).  These days, courage is what I have to talk with myself about a couple times a week.  I find this to be progress, because I remember a time when I couldn’t fathom the idea of saying that I had a courage issue.  Let’s not get courage confused with confidence, though.  The two are closely related, like first cousins.

Confidence, simply put, is being sure of yourself; certain.  It has every bit to do with how you view yourself, not how others view you.  My confidence level has improved over time, but I have a little ways to go yet.  Through things I have endured over the past 12 months are enough to make a man’s confidence evaporate like rain on hot asphalt.  It has only been through steady, consistent and deliberate work that has brought me this far (reading, praying, fasting).  I’m striving, and believe me, I’ll get what I’m after.

Growing up, I believed what I was told:  If you do this, you’ll get that.  I have been an excellent rule-follower.  It’s too bad there was no rule for more courage.  Along with that, I also believed things that people told me about myself.  “You should be this way, and that.”  Growing up in church, I was told that I should “behave” in a certain way, if I expected to get into Heaven.  So, being naive, I behaved that way.  Even still, I suppressed who I was to become something that I was not.  I was made to feel wrong for the way I was “wired” (I didn’t know that God did the wiring at the time).  It wasn’t until I got a clearer understanding of God that we all are created differently by Him (and that’s the way it should be).  It’s okay to be this nerdy, smart, corny dude.  That guy also has integrity, compassion, heart and is a great person: All the things that God loves about me.  I don’t think that anyone ever told me that it was okay to be me: until now.

So, I believe the picture says it all.

“I have the courage to be me, because I’m the only one who can do it.”-Herbert L. Brown II

Love & Peace.