Brave Together

Are we still on for tomorrow?

Yep.

You sure you want to do this?

Yep.

It’s kinda scary.

I know.

We’ll be brave together.

These messages ping ponged between my sister and me late one evening. We were overdue for a sister date, and she had a gift card to a new restaurant. A Thai restaurant.

It’s important to know that we come from a long line of Italians who think pasta is a food group and adventurous means choosing the Spicy Chicken sandwich instead of the Original at Chick-fil-A.

But we’re both in our 50’s and in some ways, we’re busting out. Shaking things up. Living dangerously. Hence the pinkie promise to help each other be brave and try something new.

So off we went, brave together.

I often need a sister’s help to face something new and scary.

The High Ropes Course

I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all, and that was the problem. I saw the spider web of ropes and pulleys and platforms dangling thirty feet up and said out loud (my first mistake), “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to do a high ropes course.”

“Me too,” my friend Maryann said.

“Let’s do it. We’ll be brave together.”

So we did.

I went first, finding the footholds and testing the options.

“Go to the right on this section,” I called back to her. “The left side’s too wobbly. And turn your feet sideways on the boards. It’s more stable. And for heaven’s sake, don’t look down.”

We disagreed later about who was more frightened. Regardless, when we stepped onto the final platform, shaking like Aspen leaves in a windstorm, we raised our arms and cheered. We were scared, but brave—together.

The Mission Trip

Toward the end of our homeschooling journey, my husband and I started praying about taking our kids on an international mission trip. The teacher/parent in me knew our middle-class American kids needed to experience something other than suburbia. We’d taught them to serve others, but so far, that service had been conveniently scheduled and well within our comfort zones. We needed to stretch.

We emailed Carlos and Sandy, church-planting missionary friends serving in Mexico. Could you use our family’s help? Almost immediately, she’d fired back a response. And the ideas kept coming. We could do a ladies event. And a Valentine banquet. And a couple’s retreat. Y’all could teach Sunday school, David could preach, and we could minister to some needy families in the church. Do either of you have carpentry skills? Our kitchen cabinets need repairs.

My excitement tanked, and my fear spiked. “Lord, I’m scared,” I whispered one morning during my quiet time. “I know this is your will, but . . . help. I don’t even know what to pray for. This is waaaaay bigger than us.”

Later that week I mentioned the trip to my friend Mandy. “Wow. That sounds amazing. Our family has never served overseas either.”

Hope flickered in my trembling heart.

“Do you think you guys might be interested in joining us?”

“I’ll talk to Mike,” she said. “Let’s pray about it.”

Before long, Mandy and I were knee-deep in menus, lesson plans, and construction ideas. I was still fearful, and so was she. But we weren’t alone.

We’d be brave together.

Those Young Adult Children

The thought of sending my youngest daughter off to college three hundred miles away made my heart race ten times more than a high ropes course or a mission trip.

What if she gets sick or hurt, and I can’t care for her?

What if she falls in with the wrong crowd?

What if she meets some deadbeat guy and drops out of school?

What if she abandons her faith?

The possibilities were endless, and each scenario I imagined was worse than the one before.

“I’m so afraid,” I confessed to my friend Charlotte.

“I know. I feel the same way about sending my girl off to school. It’s scary.”

Two days later she called to tell me about a book she’d found—The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children. “Let’s read it together.”

“What if we set a date to pray together, once a month, for our kids?” I said. It didn’t take us long to realize if we were feeling this way, there must be other moms who are also struggling. We should invite them to pray with us.

So we did. Our Praying Parents group continues to meet today, eleven years later. We’ve prayed our kids through undergraduate studies, exams, break ups, and internships. Engagements, marriage, pregnancies, and health issues. We began as praying parents. Now many of us are praying grandparents.

Some of our kids have turned their backs on God. Others have gone through seasons of emotional, physical, or spiritual challenge. There have been celebratory highs and heartbreaking lows, but we’ve been brave—together.

Help and Hope

Life can be terrifying. If we try to go it alone, we cut ourselves off from one of our greatest sources of help and hope—our Christian sisters. Solomon might have had his guy friends in mind when he wrote Ecclesiastes 4:9–10, 12, but the truths apply to girlfriends too:

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. . . . Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

God promises to enable us to do the tasks He calls us to (Hebrews 13:20–21), but He often uses our sisters in Christ to come alongside us. As He used Aaron and Hur in Exodus 17:11–12 to hold up Moses’ arms when they grew weak in the battle, He sends caring believers to help us be strong.

I’m grateful God doesn’t expect me to go it alone. When I set aside my pride and link arms with Him and my sisters in Christ, He is glorified.

And we are brave—together.

–Written by Lori Hatcher. Used by permission from the author.