Beware, for I am Fearless ...

Today I was moving an old vanity that had been in our daughter’s room when she was younger. When I began taking out the drawers to make the move easier, I found a folded piece of paper. Written on it in bold black marker was a quote from Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein: “Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.” Apparently, this quote had struck a note with our middle-school-aged daughter, who may have been feeling anything but powerful in those emotionally turbulent years.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be brave. I suppose some people would equate “fearless” and “brave.” But I have come to learn that being brave doesn’t mean being without fear. Rather, it means not letting fear control your choices. Dave once told me that he admired my bravery. I told him I didn’t think I was very brave, because sometimes I was afraid to do something--I just did it anyway. He said, “That’s what makes you brave. If you weren’t afraid, you wouldn’t need to be brave.”

One day while driving, I was thinking about what makes us brave. I immediately thought about a scene in the beginning of the movie “Dances with Wolves.” Lt. John J. Dunbar has been injured and a doctor is getting ready to amputate his leg. While the doctor’s back is turned, he slips away, finds a horse and begins to ride into the face of the enemy. His fellow soldiers are awed by this “fearless” man. But he is not fearless. He is suicidal. He would rather die there on the battlefield than face a life of disability. He has nothing to lose. In his own comments, Dunbar remarks on the irony of this situation: “The strangeness of this life cannot be measured; in trying to produce my own death, I was elevated to the status of a living hero.” 

So does “having nothing to lose” make you brave? I could make a case for that. Ultimately, as believers in Jesus, we have nothing to lose. “So we are always confident, even though we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then, we will be at home with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5: 6-8.

We have an assurance that life is eternal, and home waiting. When our daughter went to camp for the very first time, she said she would lie on her bunk bed in the dark and stare at the crack of light under the door until she went to sleep. Life is kind of like that. We see just a little bit of God’s glory, like a crack of light under a door, that brings us comfort in the dark times. Sometimes situations--like suffering and grief--push that door open a little bit wider, and the light shines brighter, revealing to us the glory waiting on the other side. We know one day that door will open fully, and we will be home.

Until then, we fear. And, by necessity, we are brave. Living takes a certain amount of bravery.  As Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins of the Lord of the Rings said it: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” 

Most of us feel we have a lot to lose. We don’t want to ride into the face of the enemy. We want to live and live well, while the days are long. So, we trust in the one who is perfectly faithful, completely good and loving, able and willing to give us the courage we need for every situation.

“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord

and have made the Lord their hope and

confidence.

They are like trees planted along a 

riverbank,

with roots that reach deep into the water.

Such trees are not bothered by

the heat

or worried by long months of drought.

Their leaves stay green,

And they never stop producing fruit.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Personally, I would rewrite this Mary Shelley's quote: “Behold, for I am fearful, but trusting in the Lord, and therefore, powerful.”