Brave

The other day I fulfilled a dream.

I checked an item off my bucket list. 

It wasn't huge.

It wasn't horrifying. 

It wasn't difficult.

But it was brave. 

I donated 8 inches of my hair.

As I sat in the stylist's chart listening to the scissors slice through my thick ponytail, I thought about the first time I went "short" with my hair. It wasn't drastic like this time. It was gradual. I'd go a little shorter each time until I was brave enough to finally go "short". The first time I went "short" was after Little E was born. 

I thought about the fact that I had made another change after E was born. I finally got up the nerve to get my nosed pierced.

(let me just say, that nose ring is gone now due to regulations during student teaching, 
but man I miss it!)

A nose ring and short haircut within just a couple months of becoming a mother. 

Was this coincidence? 

I don't believe so.

I believe everything is ordained by our sovereign Lord.

Was the change simply because I wanted something different? 

Was it because I wanted to feel "normal" again after having my first baby and everything feeling so strange and out of whack? 

Or was it that I was finally brave enough to do what I wanted without fear of what others would think? 

Had motherhood made me brave? 

There is this sense that after having birthed a child --a real, live, little human-- that you can do anything. 

An empowerment. 

The stylist snipped the last bit of that ponytail off as I jokingly asked if it was too late to change my mind. And the thought occurred to me that it wasn't motherhood, necessarily, that has made me brave but the changes that have occurred in my heart over those years. 

Christ has matured me, taught me, and emboldened me in ways I never knew I needed...and up until this point I didn't know it had occurred. 

Motherhood didn't make me brave. 

Motherhood was a means that Christ used to make me brave. 

Christ has given me confidence in who I am in him.

He has given courage in both big and small areas of life. 

He has made me brave. 

How is he making you brave -- even when you don't feel brave?

Speaking of BRAVE...Have you heard this song?