You are courageous. There’s no doubt about it.

Every single day you open your eyes to a bright world and advance into an unknown series of minutes and hours – sometimes replaying yesterday’s monotony, other times building on tomorrow’s promises. It may seem insignificant and even petty to suggest that this is courageous, with women like St Joan of Arc, Queen Esther, and Chiara Petrillo among our faith-filled, womanly ancestry. But what I’m going to suggest doesn’t stop there.

Every day you seek God’s will, pray for guidance, offer up the pains, and press on. Do you fall? Um, yes! Who doesn’t! I’m at the top of this list of daily failures – I lose my patience, complain, react uncharitably, and let my mouth do way more talking than it should. (And that’s just to name a few!)

But here’s where the secret of courage lies…

By a strange and beautiful working of the battle between good and evil, our fears ad failures can become the very key to some of the greatest acts of courage we can imagine.

“The devil’s in the details,” quoth the saying old, but true. I think we can safely add, “discouragement” to his list of crimes – don’t you?

When we get discouraged, we are giving in to the very meaning of the word itself – a falling from courage. We doubt what we know – that God is our creator, wants our good, and loves us beyond compare. A thought of discouragement tempts us to lose the virtue of faith and hope. Our lack of skill, perseverance, and even our failures all cause us to get discouraged, many many times a day!

This week, I nearly quit my Couch to 5K routine half-way through every. single. day. “I just can’t do it,” I said to myself (because if I said one word out loud, I was convinced I’d go into cardiac arrest. 🙂 Like a good angel on my right shoulder, a voice countered mine, saying, “Mary! Is this how you live your life? No! Keep running, like you do to Me, and I will see you through.”

Guess what? I survived. And the triumph of not quitting was worth the pain.

My dear sisters, this is exactly how I propose we should handle our daily discouragements – be they little or big. I suggest we not only “keep running” – we push those discouraging thoughts out of our head immediately. Turn away from them. Flee from them – like you would from any impending evil.

Let’s defy discouragement.

And in doing so, find courage. The same type of courage that made St. Joan of Arc, Esther, and Chiara Pietrillo able to make their supreme acts of courage. Because if you think for a moment that the virtue of courage was instilled in that ONE moment of their current fame, you are wrong. They were holy, persistent, and resilient women before they said “yes” to the grand calling of courage the the Church and history continue to write about to this day.

We can choose to be courageous in the big things and the little things.

Courage, sister!

“We shall steer safely through every storm so long as our heart is right, our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God.” – St. Francis de Sales