That's Courage

pinterestWell, I was going to write a snippets post, but while I was in the shower I got the idea for this post instead.  This is for those of you who read my posts Why I Threw Your Writing in the Trash and "Discipline is the Cornerstone to Writing," and said they hit close to home.  This is the encouraging post.   

Last night I was watching (part three of) a fashion Youtuber's story; she was recapping the rise and fall of her dreams of being in the fashion industry and/or of becoming a successful lawyer, recapping her rejections, her heartbreaks, her depression, her alcoholism - and finally, the light.  (I have to say, my favourite line is probably, "When I'm sad, I no longer go to alcohol - I go to Jesus.")  She is now sane, stable, successful, happy, confident, but she highlighted the fact that it is so easy, when your dreams fail, to just quit.  To say, this is it.  I'm not going to succeed.  I'll never succeed.  Everything everyone said about me is true: I'm a failure.  It's so easy to throw in the towel and call it done, and live the rest of your life as a meaningless shell.  That's a lot of life to live in a hollow, blacked-out state, people.  

But let's bring this back to writing.  That Youtuber is an example of the saying, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  I spooned out a pretty bitter medicine in my other two posts, and some of you were man enough to take it.  Now comes the good stuff.  You'll be stronger for it.  Maybe not now - probably not now - but down the road, if you keep on going, you'll find you've overcome obstacles you once thought insurmountable.  And that gives you the courage to face the obstacles that are still ahead.  If you take the bad news with the good, and decide to get up, get going, soldier on, you will be so glad you did.  

Let's go back to the Youtuber for a second.  "If someone had told my childhood self that Google would be flying me around the country to do fashion shoots, I would have been like...'What's Google?' "  Moral: you don't know your own future.  There may be opportunities in your future that don't even exist yet, you don't know!  Do not despair.  Do not give up.  To get up, to keep working from day to day, to trust to God that he will prosper the work of your hands, that's courage.  That's strength.  That's something worth taking one's hat off to.