Today I look around, and see the results of every choice I’ve made. I praise God for His mercy, grace, forbearance. I experience recompense in situations great and small, all day every day. My circle of acquaintances is wide;  the number of close friends is few. That is deliberate, and something I’ve grown to cherish. I weed the garden of my heart on a regular basis. I trust, but not as easily as I used to. I have developed an awareness of red flags and danger signs. When I was young and naive, I assumed everyone in the world was like me. Now, in my middle age, I realize that those like me are few and far between.

I’m a funny one; I enjoy the pleasure of my own company more than I like being around large groups of people, or a few of the wrong people. And what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for me might not be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for you. We all have preferences. I have settled into the realization of my own, and have given myself permission to let that be okay.

Sometimes I feel like a teenager. Well, that’s an exaggeration, I probably feel late twenties. Twenty seven. Then, some days, I look in the mirror and see someone who looks vaguely like my grandmother. There are the days when I look away quickly; other times I stare into her eyes for a few minutes, searching for clues.

I think back to all the mirrors I’ve looked in through the years, and wish I could see that girl, that young woman, again. Would I recognize her now? I don’t know. But if I could tell her anything, it’s that she’s a good girl; that she’s lovable. I would tell her that, though the road will be rocky, though there’s pain up ahead, it’s all gonna be okay. I would tell her that she will emerge a compassionate warrior.

Maybe I’d talk to her about courage. I wouldn’t tell her to be more courageous. I would tell her to look at the hard choices she’ll make, and to recognize how courageous she is.

There will be days when courage is what it takes to lift your head up off the pillow, throw your legs over the side, stand up and face another day.

Courage, I would counsel her, is what it takes to say ‘no’ to someone when your guilt tells you to say ‘yes.’

Sometimes courage is a matter of speaking truth to power even when your heart pounds, your voice shakes. One time it’s confronting a teacher about how your young son is being treated in class; another time it’s telling the store manager that you’ve worked for two years without a raise. 

And there will come a day when courage is telling your husband you don’t know how to fix it this time. Courage is what it will be when you tell your youngest sister, decades later at your father’s funeral, that everything’s okay and it’s time to move on.

I think that walking around inside your own skin takes a certain type of courage. What do we know for sure about anything, really? Two things: death, and taxes. And, I’d add, broken hearts. If a person gets out of this world without heartbreak, they’ve never really been here at all. 

As C.S. Lewis states in The Four Loves:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it us safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

So, yes, dear girl, I’d say, you’ll have the courage to be soft. To be unguarded, open. It’s a huge risk, there’s no doubt about that. But which risk is greater? And what, if not the risk to love, are we here for?

I will never regret the love I had for my husband. There’s a part of my heart that still belongs to him. I think that’s how love works. I am where I am now because of the choices I’ve made. 

My choices in the last years of our marriage were fundamentally based on his choices during that same period. His choices were, in plain english, utterly destructive to our union together. They were anathema to our commitment to God, and each other.

Listen, I know there are those who will scoff and say, ‘Oh please, this is the twenty first century, surely the love-honor-obey and till-death-do-we-part bits are no longer applicable.’ I would counter that: when it comes to affairs of, and promises from, the heart those words are not only applicable but sacrosanct. Applied wholly, they define everything; every choice, every decision, every inclination is governed through the lens of those words.

Applied intermittently by one and wholly by another, a mockery is made of that pledge, and of the true heart that is still bound by and devoted to it.

And it takes courage, once the truth is known, to say, ‘enough.’

The beautiful thing about courage is that it makes way for redemption. A brave choice, humbly made, is driven by faith and filled with honesty. Redemption is its reward. There is no room in this space for pretense. 

Courage, I’d tell her, makes all good things possible.

As C.S. Lewis says,

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.“

On the opposite side of courage is arrogance. An arrogant heart is filled with cynicism, excuses, grievances, and a belief that there is a score to settle; that they’ve been wronged. Somehow, life has become a fearful contest and they believe they’ve been cheated. Ironically, a person harboring arrogance cheats herself. The state of arrogance is the continuing manifestation of loss.

In our human condition, no healthy person is all courage or all arrogance all the time. We tend to make our way through the rocky maze of life, and experience numerous courageous or arrogant pitstops along our journey. The inevitable result of each offers us the wisdom needed to make better choices as we go. Some people pay attention. Some people don’t.

As for me, I pray every day that my utterly human effort at good choices will make up for the bad choices I’ve made. Sometimes I lie awake at night, and scenarios from when my precious children were little lodge in my brain. I shudder, because I was so young and stupid. I ask for forgiveness for my ignorance, and I give thanks that God took hold of them when I was failing and didn’t know it. They are incredible adults, a blessing to this world, and that was not my doing. I look at them amazed and know, without question, that it’s a God thing. 

So, I would tell that girl, that young woman, there will come a time when you will be surrounded by your beautiful children, their wonderful spouses, and your adorable grandchildren. Whatever part you played in their being them, that is your best gift to the world. They are your Magnum Opus. 

I write songs, I write prose, I paint pictures, I create beautiful spaces. But those children carried under my heart, born into this world through me, and the children who came after … they are why I am here. 

And I thank God for it all.