Courage

Why is it so incredibly easy to be dissatisfied with life?

Why can I be in the middle of Minnesota paddling beautiful lakes and wish I could drive to the cafe with a good friend instead?

Why can I be in a cafe with a good friend and wish that I was on a more exciting adventure?

Why is it that I relish my freedom as a single person yet some nights I dream of the settled ( as in fixed location, not lower standard) life?

I don't know why.

It's all somehow part of this whole growing process we call living.

As I was watching some pointless Hulu show one weekend, I heard the phrase “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." At first I was slightly convicted by that sentence, because a large part of me feels like I don't know exactly who I am. How can I show courage to grow up as who I am if I don't know what that should look like? My mind was set: I would never be the person that shows courage by becoming who I am. Sad, but true...I thought.

But lately my mind is changing. Let's delve into object lesson land for a brief moment.

Object #1: Cookies.

Lately I have been on a homemade foods kick, so these cookies were the kind from a recipe, not the kind from a box. I had very high hopes of these from-scratch cookies turning out super well so that everyone could marvel at my cookie baking skills.

None of the batches met my expectations. Some merged together into a form of cookie-like giant biscuit. Some were too crispy. Some were caramelly and really gooey.

None of these batches ended up how I thought they would. But I tasted a little bit (maybe a lotta bit) from each one and let me tell you...they didn't taste bad at all. Actually, they tasted quite good.

It doesn't matter that the end product was nothing like what I had hoped. They were good cookies. Fact.


Object #2: A Canoe Paddle.

I recently acquired a plain wooden canoe paddle from Sunrift. I plan to sand the shiny finish off, burn a fun design into the paddle, then refinish it.

Why would I torture a perfectly happy,shiny paddle with a burning tool then force it to soak in more shiny stuff after said torture? Simply because I know that after I have burned this paddle it will be one-of-a-kind. No one else on the planet will have a matching paddle. Ever. And - regardless of my minute artistic skill - that uniqueness will make this paddle a beautiful, treasured possession of mine. Because I (sort-of) created it.

Lessons:

#1: It's not always the end product that matters.
#2: Sometimes arriving at a better beauty is gonna burn a little.

Overall, I don't think it's ending as who you are that's the courage requiring part of this life. It seems that the real courage is called for while we are enduring the process of beautification.