July – Week 1 C.l.e.a.r.

01 Jul July – Week 1 C.l.e.a.r.

Courage

Over the next few weeks I am going to be writing about each letter of C.L.E.A.R. My hope is that you are encouraged by my take on each of these characteristics. I will share other peoples stories on how they have used some of these characteristics as well. So happy reading!!

Courage is the first word in CLEAR so that will be the first word I will be talking about. Courage is a tricky thing sometimes, at least for me anyways. I think it is probably the hardest to figure out because it isn’t a tangible thing you can grab on to. Also there are many ways to talk your self out of being courageous. Trust me I deal with that a lot. It is what we all know as fear. FEAR is another acronym which stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Thats the perfect definition for fear because it is so true. How many times have we’ve been scared to try something new? I know both of my hands are up on that one! If we can understand that what we are afraid of is not really there, think of how many more things we can do!

I tell this story in my speeches sometimes about the first time I ever gave a public speech. I was 13 years old and worked for a non-profit that talked about anti-drugs and alcohol. My very first speech was at Kentwood high school. Now I thought maybe there was going to be about 500 or so students there, which is a lot but I could handle that number. I found out that there 2,000 students sitting in the gym! Oh my goodness! That is a whole lot of people. I bet you can imagine how scared I was! I remember walking out to grab the microphone from my brother hoping something would happen and the assembly would be over so I didn’t have to talk. Nothing usually happens like you want. I talked for 10 minutes and did, by my standards, an ok job. The kids loved it! I thought it was so cool that they came up to me to tell me how well I did. First off can I remind you that I was 13!!! Insert scared emoji! I was so nervous. I was so worried about what the kids wouldn’t like what I was going to say. Although somewhat valid thoughts, False Evidence Appearing Real! All of those thoughts were there to get in the way of my calling. There aren’t real and it took having a little courage to step out of my comfort zone.

Is there something that you are trying to do with your life but you are scared? Scared of what might happen or what other people might think of you? Please don’t let fear get in the way of your calling! You going to do some great things with your life but you have to step out just a little to do get there.  All it takes is one ounce of courage to big things in this life!