Risky Business

Sherry is a guest writer on the busynothings and has shared many stories and moments check out her last post to catch up on the journey she is sharing here.

Risk.

It is one of the most cringe worthy and yet beautiful words in our language.

I personally hate risk.

Hate it.

A friend and I were talking about risk and how we spend so much of our lives being taught things like, “don’t touch the hot stove”, and then you touch it get burned enough to veer far away when you see the stove for a while and in that you learn that you should never do that again.

However, with risk in life and relationships that rule seems to not apply.  We need to step back into those things and places where we were burned in order to gain ground and freedom in our lives.  

Did I mention I hate risk.

However, I  have never ceased to be amazed at the outcome of risk, (even when that risk ends in pain), and the beauty of joy, pain, fear, excitement and so many other emotions mingling together to create something that makes us be willing to go back to risk over and over again.  

This evaluation of risk in my life as of late has been born out of a season of many unknowns currently in my life.

I just moved, not only myself but the program that I am responsible to direct, I just got a new puppy, (yes he is cute…I know) new students have to be settled, new staff have to be found, and I have relationships in my life that are calling for new levels of risk each day.

His name is Cedar and he is a golden doodle. I’m so very in love.

This confident expectation I have come to discover the last few days is hope.  

I did some digging on risk and what others define it as and this is what I found.

wikipedia says…

“Risk is the potential of losing something of value, weighed against the potential to gain something of value. Values (such as physical health, social status, emotional well being or financial wealth) can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action, activity and/or inaction, foreseen or unforeseen.

Risk can also be defined as the intentional interaction with uncertainty. “

Risk involves deep value. 

Risk also seems as if it  involves intentionality.

Risk takes stepping out in bravery in its rawest form. 

Risk is moments of choice.

Moments in which one decides if they will intentionally step out and tango with uncertainty.

There is always an option to gain something better than could have ever been imagined or lose something that is so dear.

I have been seeing that in order to step out in bravery and risk anything I have to hope that there is potential for things to be good.

Hope seems to need bravery to walk along side of it in order to truly blossom into full life changing living hope.

As I have looked at the words bravery and brave in the bible and in definitions I have found that it is almost always used as a call to pull someone out in the midst of fear to empower them to act.

There is an association that appears in almost an equal capacity; war and battle.

The action of going into battle brings forth a call of bravery.

I feel as I step onto the battle grounds of uncertainty there waiting is this surmounting fear that causes my heart to race as if it will explode directly out of my chest.

I can hear every inch of movement of the muscle pumping blood.  I can feel it racing in my finger tips. My breathing begins to change to the rhythm of my heart’s movement.

Then a moment that changes everything.  

I look around me and there is a field of others who are also risking deeply.  There are others having to call on a level of bravery that they didn’t know was inside of them.  Standing there among others bravery doesn’t seem so hard to come by and the action to step out seems easier than moments before, but the fear still remains and is still paralyzing 

Then, standing next to me I see, is the greatest warrior and fighter that has ever walked the earth, my savior.

He looks at me and says, “I am calling you into bravery, and I will go with you.”

I now know… I am not alone.

In this moment I know that I am not being shoved into the battle, but being called into this intentional lifestyle of brave living by the King of Kings and He will be there.

This knowledge doesn’t take the fear away as I would expect or even want.

It does something different.

It causes fear to morph into a bravery inside that I have never known and that I know is not fully of my flesh but of my spirit.

It causes me to take a step.

It causes me to not only feel brave…

It causes me to be brave.