How to Become Brave

My Rita-child is a very plucky little girl, as you may have deduced from previous posts. But she does have some chinks in her walls where she is vulnerable. One of them is dreams. She has learned what to do about it. I hear the thudding of her feet as she stumbles through the dark house to our bedroom. “Mama, something roared at me. I think you need to pray for me.” I lay my hand on her head and pray, “Jesus, protect Rita from scary dreams. Help her to forget them and relax. Give her sweet sleep and beautiful dreams. Amen.” That is all it takes for her to regain courage and pad back to her nest of covers in her bed. There is no snivelling, because she now knows that all will be well.

Another thing that reduces her to tears is getting hurt. She just frankly opens her face and howls. Unfortunately, right now she seems to be in an accident prone stage. Today I took stock of her current “owies”. There is a yellowish goose egg on her forehead, a sore on her nose, a cat scratch on her cheek, a sizable patch of skin scraped off her knee, and an inflamed toe. I am not making this up! She goes through more band aids than all the rest of the children put together. I don’t run quite as fast as I used to when I hear her siren call, because it is usually some scrape or other that is not all that serious. Still, she is totally demoralized by blood oozing out of her own body. “I need a band aid,” she will blubber, “and pray for me.” So I put some salve on her band aid, stick it on, and pray for Jesus to heal her hurt. She shuts right up, squares her little shoulders, and goes out to face the world again. “Sometimes Jesus heals me right away, and sometimes it takes a while,” she informed me the other day.

This is such a powerful lesson for me when I do not feel brave. I do not have to deal alone with the disturbing thing that is causing me distress. All I need to do is go to Someone bigger and pray. Then I can move on and know that He is taking care of the scary stuff.