Today my 5-year-old showed courage I didn’t know she had.

I have three kids, 5, 3, and 1, and they all have very different personalities. And while Grace is a nurturer, sensitive to others, and smart as a whip, well… she’s not the bravest girl by nature. She sees danger in a lot of things, and often lets fear rule her. This is just one of the things that makes her a very close facsimile of her mother.

I never knew fear the way I know it now as a mother. The responsibility of protecting, nurturing, and loving my littles in the best way  possible is a tremendous one, and I often fear I am not worthy of this privilege. I admit to being a worrier by nature; the fact that I ended up with kids with potentially life-threatening allergies and one has asthma seems an almost cruel twist of fate. I have many fears for my children, and too often I fixate on them, literally letting them keep me up at night.

But today Grace was my teacher, and I her student. After weeks of having her new bike sitting in the garage and finding various excuses not to ride it (“I can’t find my helmet,” “today I’ll just ride my scooter”), she finally got on (“on flat ground though, mama, if I am going downhill it will be too scary”).  It wasn’t that her fears were gone. She just managed to power through them. And isn’t that what courage is? Not the absence of fear, but the deliberate choice to take action, to take back the reins from fear.

I was so proud to see her riding down the street on a “big girl” bike, her trike now happily inherited by her brother.

I pray that I can be a more courageous mother to these little ones… for Grace, who needs to see a strong mama moving past the fear; for Eli, whose health issues have caused my hair to grey at age 34; and for Seth, now so little and indeed needing to be held close… but who even still needs space to grow and learn and skin his knees.  May I find the courage to balance loving, protecting, and nurturing them, while still realizing that the training wheels must one day come off in order for them to thrive.

blog collage featuring babywearing imagesyoung girl rides big bike

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