Imagine you have some unpleasant task in front of you. It could be a difficult conversation with a family member, or a medical test with a potentially frightening outcome, or even trying to make some change in your professional life. Sometimes even having to go out and conduct our lives when we're physically sick, or injured, or coping with mental illness, can feel daunting or even overwhelming. Life can be challenging, and some tasks seem insurmountable.
Yet I say that these tasks "seem" insurmountable on purpose-because every day, people who are frightened of the path before them nonetheless take the first step on that journey. A woman makes arrangements to move out of an abusive relationship. A man schedules the test and follow-up appointment with his doctor. A stammering student heads to the lectern to give a presentation in college. A person living with social anxiety prepares for a family party. Every day, we walk the path before us, in the direction we need to go, even though we are afraid.
However privileged your life has been, you have encountered something that you had to do but were afraid to do. In that moment, when you did it anyway, even though you were afraid, you were brave. You are a brave person. You've been courageous before, and you'll do it again. Some of you may call on that courage every day to meet the challenges of life.
What resources do we draw on when we need to be brave? I rely on the love and support of family and friends. I remember that I've done frightening things before and survived. I try to imagine the future, on the other side of the hard thing, and remember why I'm trying to do it in the first place. And I search inside myself for my deepest values, for my commitment to my ideals, and remember what grounds me and whose I am. I remember that I am not claimed by my fear or by anybody else's expectations of what I should be or do. Only I can walk the path that is uniquely mine.
In our Unitarian Universalist faith, we affirm a loving presence that walks with us throughout our lives, in the good times and the bad. You may know this presence as loving people in your life. You may know it as your core self, a sense of self-respect and dignity that cannot be taken away. You may know it as the comfort of a loving God, a God who searches you and knows you and loves you. Whatever that presence is in your life, it is with you in your fears and it is with you when you must be brave. It is with you when you triumph and when you must try again another day. That presence has been with us since before we were born and will call us back to eternity when it is our time to die. Our liberal faith affirms this presence in our lives.
There will always be hard times in our lives. In those moments, I wish for you a connection to your bravery and your spiritual center; and I wish that you know you are not alone.
In faith,
Rev. Sarah Stewart
