I do not think of myself as a naturally brave person. I’ve never been bungee jumping or sky diving—and I have zero desire to do so. I like knowing what’s coming at me, and I prefer having a life that’s fairly scheduled. I’m not a big fan of change. I’ve never done anything particularly heroic or courageous that anyone else would have noticed.
But in this past week, I have been drawn to this song, entitled “You Make Me Brave.” Here are some of the lyrics:
As Your love,
in wave after wave
Crashes over me,
crashes over me
For You are for us
You are not against us
Champion of Heaven
You made a way for all to enter in
I have heard You call my name
I have heard the song of love that You sing
So I will let You draw me out beyond the shore
Into Your grace
Into Your grace
You make me brave
You make me brave
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves
You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the love that made a way
Those words remind me of the words of the One who called Joshua to be “strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:9), the words of the One who says that His “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18) and the One whose words tell me that I am like the matriarch Sarah, if I “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:6). So much of Scripture is filled with the call to let go of fear and to grasp onto the love of God—the only unfailing love that fills us with courage even as He calls us into new and challenging things.
And as I’ve been thinking about bravery, I feel like God has gently shown me that I have been brave during this last year. Not in ways that anyone else would notice—I have not run into any burning houses or jumped from any helicopters. But I have realized that these last fifteen months of my life—becoming a mama—have required me to be braver than I ever thought I could be. I’ve written before, but the transition into motherhood wasn’t easy for me. I had no idea how it would change everything in my life all at once–and remember, change isn’t easy for me. But, the love of God upheld me. And mothering Ella is simultaneously the most wonderful and the most crazy thing I’ve ever done.
Every day I realize, afresh, that no one else can be her mother. And that requires great bravery from me—to keep saying yes.
Every day, even when I feel like I have very little in my own tank, I say yes to Jesus. And He—He is the one who makes me brave. He is the one who enables me to say yes again to the responsibility and yes to the joy and yes to the exhaustion and yes to the love and yes to the consistency and yes to the laughter and yes to the constant reality is life as a mom. It is costing much of me to be a present, loving mother. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But some days, it is a brave choice for me to show up and love and serve and giggle and clothe and bathe and feed again, one day at a time.
So, to my fellow mamas: you might not be saving the world today, but you are brave. You are raising and loving and serving a little life—or several little lives—and Jesus knows the bravery that requires. He knows the cost. What may not look like much to the outside world—making meals, wiping bottoms, changing clothes, cleaning up Cheerios—looks like bravery from Heaven’s perspective. You are brave for showing up again today, for not pulling your heart out of this beautiful and costly work of mothering. You can be strong and courageous, and you can let His love cast out your fear—because Christ is with you and in you.
He is our brave.
