WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE WITH COURAGE

"It always seems impossible until its done."

~Nelson Mandela

In any moment we may pray for courage.  "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.  For Thou art with me.  Thy rod and Thy staff they encourage me... "(Psalm 23). 

But where and how does this power get inside the human heart?  I quote from Lewis B. Smedes in a Pretty Good Person. "I have watched a longshot filly with undistinguished bloodlines languish behind a whole field of horses for a full turn, caught in the seventh or eighth place, where the smart money expected her to finish.  Then, having given nobody a hint of what she had in her, she makes a run for it.  She surges, her slender legs pounding into the turf, pushing the massive barrel of her body through the thick of the pack.  Her neck and her head pull her glistening chestnut bulk forward with heroic, rhythmic lunges.  She reaches the leaders and then, with a final fury, finishes a fine nostril ahead of the pack."

To many this may be generated by what horse people call 'heart.'  It just could be the same power that holds our warriors on their feet and keeps them fighting.  Perhaps this kind of courage comes from an animal instinct.  Smedes continues, "Courageous people will do what they know they have to do....the power of the heart resides in the will."  Socrates taught that a person finds courage by having it taught to him.  But courage is 'neither natural nor taught,' he said.  But comes to us 'by divine dispensation.'

So this animal instinct, as well as will power, and faith, could be where our warrior's courage is born.  To them courage comes alive in action.  Our warrior's courage can be shown many ways, shapes, and forms.  But none so great as when they come home and find that the burden of living is sometimes a larger burden than they can handle.

It can take great courage to to look these burdens in the face and persevere. And then there are the times when our warriors coming home with invisible wounds find a friend by their sides that will allow them to celebrate the life they have. Life isn't quite so bleak when joined in comradeship with a dog that doesn't judge what you look like, and doesn't care.  A dog that will lay by your side when you are having a horrific migraine, a dog who will not turn away for fear of not knowing what to say because of your disfigured face, a dog that doesn't endlessly ask questions or put conditions or demands on you, and a dog who will face PTSD head on with you and have your back at all times, good and bad.

A PTSD Support Dog allows our warriors with this invisible wound to live with some hope in a society that sometimes appears to discourage people who have disabilities. 

Our warrior's courage is often a gamble with life, but with a dog by their sides as they walk through the shadows, they are able to affirm life in the midst of their daily demons.  The dictionary defines courage as 'facing danger without fear.'  As Smedes so aptly wrote, "Only people who are afraid have courage.  Fear is to courage what breathing in is to breathing out." 

To a wounded warrior a dog offers hope.  A kind of hope that doesn't come from anything or anyone else.  Hope can give them a second chance and hope can give them courage to do what they are afraid to do.  And suddenly they find they don't have to do it alone.

" Pain is weakness leaving the body."

~ Tom Sobal

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