June 2013
Starbucks in Kailua, Hawaii
I got to travel to Honolulu, Hawaii, to speak at a conference. (I know, sacrificing for the gospel.) One afternoon before the conference started, I left the Thurstons’ home on Spiffy Lane and went into town for some writing time. I walked into the Kailua Starbucks to write for a bit and looked around to see zero tables available. I didn’t really have a plan B for where to write, so I went ahead and got in line for my drink.
A table opened up between a vacationing couple and three tan and adorable surfer dudes. The surfers were talking about their marriages, so I tuned out because, ya know, they have wives already.
I began to unpack, and just because of proximity (the tables were close, y’all), I couldn’t help but check back into their conversation — and I heard them talking about loving their wives like Christ loves the church. They talked about absolute truth and how God is the only thing that is absolute, and suddenly I realized I was watching two of them share Jesus with the third.
My heart began to race. My brain was praying for them before I even realized it. They were saying the hard things to this guy — that he needed Jesus, that there is no other way but Jesus, that if he wanted to know Jesus personally, it could happen right here and right now.
You know why we have to be brave? Because courage changes lives. And eternity.
I know, you think I’m being dramatic maybe, but listen. That guy? Sitting to my right, hearing how Jesus is the answer? His life is forever different, his future is forever altered, because those two surfers were brave enough to say the thing.
My drink wasn’t ready, but I stood up anyway. I can’t explain it, but I liken it to the fact that at the end of a University of Georgia football game, when things are on the line, I like to pace. I felt that same thing in me as I heard these twentysomething guys talking about Jesus.
As I was about to walk from my table to the drink counter, a couple at another table stopped me. The husband, probably in his mid-fifties, said, “That’s a nice laptop.” To be fair, I have a very basic computer, so this was the weirdest lead-in sentence I’d heard in a while.
“Thanks,” I responded. “I’m an author so, you know, I gotta take the office with me.”
(Please insert an awkward laugh here from me because, well, I did.)
He asked what I wrote. “Memoir-type nonfiction books for Christians,” I told him — and he said, “WOW, WE ARE CHRISTIANS TOO!” in as excited a voice as you just imagined. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder and asked if he could pray for me.
Brave. Brave. Brave.
What kind of Starbucks was that place? What are they putting in the drinks that made all these people do the scary thing?
I don’t know. But yes, I let him pray for me. I never turn that stuff down. I don’t remember all the words he prayed, but I will never forget that he asked. It changed me.
Seeing other people be brave makes you want to be brave too.
That’s why you’ll see rational adults going down a loopty-loop waterslide even if they don’t want to, because they want to show the kids it isn’t scary.
It’s a domino effect.
That’s why we have to start. It’s why we have to go first. It’s why we have to be brave — so that others will be inspired to be brave as well.
As we’ve discussed, other people can stand with you, encourage your courage, and cheer for you. But the real joy is when we get to be the ones who lead others to a new level of bravery. Sure, I could insert a quote from William Wallace here, but you know how I feel about Scotland, so that would be totally predictable.
“They may take our lives, but they will never take . . .”
Seriously. I won’t.
“. . . our freedom!”
Sorry. I did.
I saw a picture in my head one time as a friend told me a story of his trip through the jungle.* He could see the path at his feet before him, but if he looked straight ahead, the brush was so thick he couldn’t see anything but the vines and leaves tangled at eye level.
He was leading a team, and so it was up to him to use his machete (don’t you know he loved telling me this part of the story) to chop at the overgrowth to make a way for his people to head down the path. He got scraped up a good bit, but, as he tells it, that was just a minor setback in the bigger story where he was the hero — yes, he called himself a hero — the story that there was a way to walk and it was up to him to make sure those behind him had clear access to travel.
A few years later, far, far away from the jungles of Brazil, I sat across the table in a coffee shop here in Nashville as a young single girl told me of her aches and pains and the faith issues that, in her mind, were directly related to her singleness. (I. Hear. Ya. Sister.) She didn’t cry, but I held a napkin in my grip because I thought for sure she would at any moment. She told me stories — many that I felt she was pulling from my own journal as a twentysomething single Christian gal — and I told her what I never knew to tell myself.
I know.
But God has not forgotten you.
He is showing you his love for you, even now.
Believe him. Believe his Word. Believe his heart.
The year 2011 is when I started writing publicly about my single life. She had noticed. And she asked me, “Why now? What is it about your thirty-first year that made you finally want to talk about it?”
“God.” I said. “He just made it clear this was the right time.”
Without hesitation, she said, “I’m so glad. We all need trailblazers. Now that I see that you’ve done this, I genuinely think I can do it too.”
I almost laughed. Trailblazer? Sister, if this is trailblazing, I am the most cut-up, ill-equipped, whiny leader a team has ever encountered.
I frustratingly hack away at the brush that cuts me on this path of singleness, the thorns of lies that try to penetrate my skin, the leaves of worry, the vines of loneliness that weave so tight before my eyes that the only way I can even know there is a way forward is by the path at my feet. (And even that isn’t so comforting because I don’t know where it leads.)
“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path . . .” I sing in my head as the tears pour forth and I push forward on this trail.
I guess I never realized people were watching. I’ve never noticed the innocent young faces lined up behind me, watching the clearing process and then walking through the openings my toiling has created.
I never knew this was for them.
If that is the case, then maybe the days I have wrestled with my singleness and the God who knows and loves me through it all were so that others behind me would see and then know an easier path.
You, my friend, married or single, female or male, you are blazing a trail with your life for the younger women and men behind you. They will have their own overgrowth to challenge them, and they will lead the way for others.
Because you are making a way for them, saving them some pain that your bloodied arms prove is real, and honoring their footsteps by providing a clear path.
Never forget as you step forward with your life that you are a trailblazer.
Someone is watching.
It’s the walking in front of. It’s the standing beside. It’s the trudging behind. We do this because we aren’t alone in it. Even if you don’t see others watching or standing or following, they are there. Women, young men, old men — all sorts of people. Seeing you be brave may be all they need to be brave. That may be all it takes.
You get the chance to live courageously. You were meant for it. You were born for it. It never feels easy, and it never is free. But it is what we want more than anything else.
This is your map. This is your story. Be brave for yourself, be brave for your God, and be brave for the onlookers, the ones who will be inspired by you to inspire others.
My dear friends Drew and Ellie Holcomb just played at Bonnaroo for the first time. Bonnaroo is a huge outdoor music festival in Manchester, Tennessee. To be asked to play there is to say you have really made an impact musically on lots of lives. I asked Ellie how it went, and she said, “It was incredible. A bucket list moment. It was everything we dreamed it would be.”
After years of working, of saying small, brave yeses for their career — at first opening for other artists, all the recording sessions, concert venues, and performance opportunities — here they are saying a big yes. Their brave is on a stage in front of all of us, and if you’ve heard any of their music, you know it changes you and affects you. And who knows where it goes from here.
I watch them. I observe their courage. I see the yeses they say, and it builds something in me. It makes me want to be brave with my art so others can be inspired. And the courage trickles down and down and down to more people than Drew and Ellie will ever know.
So you do it for them — for the people watching and for the ones who will come behind you. But you do it for yourself too. You choose it because it’s the way you want to live.
Everything hinges on courage. Absolutely everything.
And when you choose it, maybe I will too, and then the dominos of cowardice will start to fall, and the sound we hear as those dominoes in your mind crash to the ground will be the sound of fear losing.
You want to change the world? Be brave. Be you. Don’t try to be someone else or do someone else’s brave thing. Don’t move to Africa because it is brave. Move because it sounds like the most terrifyingly perfect next step for you. Don’t write a song because it takes courage. Write it because you’ll puke if you don’t — even if you puke when you do. Because it matters. Every moment matters. And you being you? That is brave. It will make me brave. We will all be brave.
*This section is based on a July 21, 2012, post titled “Trailblazer,” which originally appeared on the (in)courage blog, an online home for the hearts of women (www.incourage.me/).