Devotion 405 - Brave

There are days when mercy shows up and you simply cannot mistake its presence.

It shows itself with the ease of a dreaded task or good when bad stood bold.

It shows up in a hospital room with a nurse we knew.  She had made the last time so much better.

She came in and said, “Do you remember me?”

We shook our heads yes, we, meaning my husband and I and grateful tears swelled in my eyes.  My daughter sat stone silent.

I wanted to grab this nurses’ hands and shout a hallelujah.  She was the one who sat with us for Ava's first surgery, the surgery that was delayed ninety minutes.  She made it okay.

She was the one who noticed Ava whiling away the time with a cherished video. She was the one who went to her locker and sterilized her iPad so that Ava could watch that same video on the way into the operating room.

She was the one who brought the wagon to whisk her away, but not before she lined it with sheets and blankets to make sure it was absolutely perfect and soft and comforting for my little girl.

Do we remember you?  Yes, one thousand times yes.

She brought in the same little doll, the one dressed in surgery clothes and elastic hat, the one that is supposed to make this easier. Ava shook her head at the doll; she was not buying what this nurse was selling.  Ava was intrigued though when the nurse said this was her very last doll with a super hero mask.  The very last, perhaps it was special

.

Ava thought maybe it was too, although her words would not let on, her eyes did.  Then a little package underneath, a child size cape and a child size super hero mask to match the dolly’s.  Ava refused to hold it as if holding it somehow let on she needed something to help her be brave.

She was being brave all on her own and we knew it.  I tucked the cape and mask into her bag and told her we would save it for when she got home.  I said her brother would love it, even if she wasn’t so sure.

We were not in the house three minutes when she asked for the cape and mask,  even in the weariness of anesthesia and a very long day she knew it was in her bag waiting for her.  She called her big brother into the room and modeled it for him.  She asked me what the letters stood for; “SB”was emblazoned on the back.  "Super Brave"   I told her.  “Today, you were super brave.”

She donned the mask and cape and called herself Super Girl. I wished with all my heart that was all it took, a mask and a cape and we could all be super brave.

We all want it don’t we?

We all want to be strong, and fierce and able to do great things and say wonderful comforting words in the scariest of times.

Bonnie Tyler was right, we do need a hero.

Only we don’t realize it.  We look in the mirror and hope to be all we need.  We hope to be brave, and smart, and funny and able to leap a tall stack of tasks with grace, finesse and perfection every day of every year.  

Until we realize, we can’t and the feelings of failure and frustration overwhelm us like a cape suffocating our very soul. We throw our hands up in surrender and finally a slice of light seeps in.  The light of truth glimmers and we see it is not us that are supposed to be everything and all things to all people.

It is Him.  The Light and the Hope of the Father that fractures the lie of failure.

The crazy thing is, the smaller we allow ourselves to be, the bigger He gets.  The more we admit we are not enough, not brave enough or smart enough or fun or thin or successful enough, He sweeps in becomes just that, everything.

We are not supposed to be the Hero. We are simply supposed to reflect the glory.

When we start walking in the knowledge of freedom, we get to see the Hero working on our behalf., and it is absolutely extraordinary

He sends nurses to shaky parents and He makes little girls feel brave.

He turns the most bitter of times into the sweetest moments of surrender.  He looks into the eyes of the lost and shows them the way home.  

He is hope where there was agony.  He is strength where the mind has grown weak.  And He is friendship when our dearest have forsaken.

He doesn’t demand anything but the simple act of surrender.  Hold your hands up Beloved.  Let Him be your Hero.

“We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us.”

 2 Corinthians 1:10