The Courage to Endure
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One of the things I miss most about home is having a comfortable place to sit. It isn’t something most people think about, but over time, it becomes more and more important. Cushioned seats make a big difference. As I travel around, rarely do I find a soft place to sit. Soldiers do the best they can with what they have. However, you can only do so much with plywood and two-by-fours. Most of the discomforts of deployment are small, like plywood seats, but month after month, they add up.
It is easy to pray for things to be better, or different, or just easier. In my experience, these prayers are rarely answered. I don’t think prayer works that way anyway. The power of prayer does not lie in its ability to change the world we live in as much as in its potential to change we who live in the world.
Too often, wishing or praying for things to be different leads only to frustration and a downward spiral of negative thoughts and emotions. There are some things that will not change. Confronted with these hard realities, it is better to seek courage to face them than to hope in vain for a miracle.
This courage to endure is more difficult to find than the courage required for a one-time act of heroism. This everyday courage to drive on day in, day out requires more than overcoming fear. It requires us to overcome ourselves.
Maybe you never imagined yourself as courageous. Maybe you see your work as mundane. You are not out kicking down doors, grabbing up bad guys, or stopping the next spectacular attack. Even on a combat deployment, very few of us here are doing any of those things. But that does not mean that what you do does not require a real kind of courage, the kind of courage that gets you out of bed every morning and gives you the power to keep going late into the night.
This courage may not get you a medal. It may go unnoticed. Yet perseverance in spite of all the reasons you could find to give up is something to be proud of. It is this kind of courage that completes the mission and brings us safely home. n
From War Zone Faith: An Army Chaplain’s Reflections from Afghanistan, published by Skinner House Books in 2013, and available through the UUA bookstore or 800-215-9076.
- The Courage to Endure - March 1, 2015
- Possibilities and Limits - July 1, 2013
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