Brave New Year

One of the times I can remember being most afraid was standing on top of a 30 foot platform, about to jump into thin air. I remember being harnessed, I can’t remember the details, there was some kind of arrangement to stop you falling flat into the ground. I was in my mid twenties, helping for a couple of days in a summer camp in Kansas. All the 13 year olds in my group had jumped off the pole so I felt I couldn’t show myself up. The idea was that you climbed to the top in pairs and jumped together. Somehow I was left climbing to the top with a seminarian who asked if I wanted to say a prayer at the top (I didn’t – I just wanted to get it over with) – then he jumped and somehow I was left standing there with a group of 13 year olds cheering on the British lady from the ground for what seemed like a lifetime. In the end, I reasoned with myself that it would be highly embarrassing if they had to devise an alternative way to get me down, and so I jumped. Result? The exhilarating rush was definitely not worth the fear at the top, but I was glad I did it. (I wrote about the experience which you can read here.)

The book I have started the new year with is Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead. Just one chapter in, she writes about how leadership always requires courage. And you know what inevitably goes with courage? Vulnerability. Think about it. When do we ever act courageously without at the same time experiencing vulnerability? She defines vulnerability as,

the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.

You know, when I was standing at the top of that pole, I was afraid of jumping. But I was also afraid of how I would be thought of if I didn’t. That’s vulnerability.

Brené goes through all the myths – in particular, thinking that we can engineer uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability. Madeleine L’Engle writes,

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.

Over Christmas, one of the best things I watched on TV was this amazing series Our Yorkshire Farm: one family, nine kids, a remote, hillside, sheep farm. There is a moving scene where the father attempts to sell the family’s rams. It represents a large portion of the family’s annual income. He parades them in front of a large farming audience, only for them to be sold at a crushingly low price. For me, the scene summed up well courage and vulnerability. Courage is putting out there the best we have, risking ourselves or something precious for the sake of something greater.

I love the Theodore Roosevelt quote that Brené Brown uses:

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly.

At the beginning of this new year, where is your arena? Where is the arena God is calling you to dare greatly? Maybe at work you’re moving out of your comfort zone and not sure of what you’re doing? Maybe you’ve started out in a career in one direction, and know that you really want to go in another? Maybe you’re a mum whose child is struggling at school and you don’t know how best to act? Maybe you’re bravely battling mental health problems and every morning you wake up is a new arena? Maybe you’re a priest who wants to do things differently in your parish but it will require emotional exposure just to begin?

How strong our drive is to eradicate fear and vulnerability from our lives. Feeling fear and vulnerability is not weakness, it’s human. Yet never feeling them simply means we are no longer being courageous. So as we step bravely into this new year, let’s each step into our own arena with the Lord:

“Do not fear, Zion;
    do not let your hands hang limp.
The Lord your God is with you,
    the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:16-17)

Transformed in Christ