~ COURAGE ~
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Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I've never been a brave person and was
always very fearful. I would watch movies
where the hero would rescue the heroine,
or where someone would climb Mount
Everest, or perform some feat of daring,
and I would be totally in awe. I was afraid
of the dark, of rejection, of failure and of
most other things that I was convinced
took courage. No way would I go parasailing
or deep sea diving as that seemed to require
the courage that I lacked. I didn't understand
then that people who do those kinds of
things are not totally without fear, but they
have a way of overcoming their fear and still
doing it anyway.
When I came into the program and learned
that I would have to do an inventory and then,
worse still, make amends to the people I
had harmed, I was paralyzed by fear.
Eventually I realized that, even though I
feared doing these things, all I had to do
was ask my Higher Power for strength and
guidance and then do the things I'd most
feared. Perhaps these weren't the feats of
daring that I had seen heroes perform, but
for me they were great victories, and in being
able to do them, I knew that I was developing
courage.
ONE DAY AT A TIME ...
I will continue to walk through my fear with my Higher Power at my side, knowing that I am developing the courage that I thought I lacked.