Being Brave

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you’ve probably seen that I have been doing quite a bit of traveling lately. Most of this is due to my role as a patient ambassador, but I’ve been tacking on pleasure trips whenever I can. And if you’re my friend on Facebook, you’ve probably seen me ask for prayer for these trips more than once. All this travel and the truth is I’m scared to fly.

But I’m more scared of missing out on the opportunities God has given me – to share my life’s journey so far and to explore this amazing world and all the variations of people God created. I’m actually flying as I write this, off to share my story in Brooklyn, New York.

I won’t say cancer has made me brave, but it’s given me a deadline. One thing I’ve come to realize about myself is that I’m a procrastinator. I will get things done, but usually not until the deadline looms. I guess it’s that way with my life, as well, although I didn’t really realize it. I thought there would always be time to do everything I dreamed of. But now there might not be.

While cancer has given my life a deadline, I am not privy to when that deadline is, which makes the planning more challenging, but it has helped me kick things into gear. I had a speaking engagement in Phoenix last month. Normally, I would have considered the three-hour drive to see the Grand Canyon too much to tackle and have hurried back home and back to work. But this time, I carefully considered the fact that I might not make it out west again anytime soon. I decided to stay an extra day and make the three-hour trip to see the Grand Canyon. I even rode on a helicopter into the Canyon! (Please reference the aforementioned fear of flying to understand the difficulty of this decision! Even as I write this, we are experiencing a tiny bit of turbulence and fear is rising up.)

In the past, I have sometimes passed on things that others partook of. I’ve wanted my life motto to be “carpe diem,” but in reality it was more like “carpe ordinary.” Cancer has challenged me to put up or shut up. Yes, I was scared to death on the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. I thank God I was in the seat closest to the door, even though the view was terrifying, because it had access to a handle perfect for gripping. I white-knuckled that thing the entire flight! But I did it! Not only did I see the Grand Canyon, I flew over it! I got a view a lot of people miss out on and experienced one of the grandest (haha) landscapes God has created.

This week is going to be another opportunity for bravery. I’m writing this as I fly to New York City. I have a speaking engagement in Brooklyn and am taking the opportunity to catch up with two friends who live there. But they work during the week, so I’ll only see them in the evenings, and will have two full days in the city on my own. If I could choose, I would never go into a situation where I don’t know my way or what is expected of me. I hate looking like a tourist. And big cities make me nervous. But there is life to be experienced there and I want to take part.

I want to see how people live, from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I want to learn the history of one of the first places immigrants visited/lived upon arriving in their new country. I want to soak up ethnic culture in places like Little Italy and Chinatown. I want to see what it’s like to live in a big city, to buy your groceries at a local market, just enough so that you can still cart it home on the subway. I want to people-watch and ponder the enormity of the world and how small I really am in it. I want to “live deep and suck all the marrow out of life” (thank you, English degree and Henry David Thoreau).

So I screw my courage to the sticking place and pray my way through today’s flight and all the others. I may be afraid of flying, but I’m more afraid of missing out on all there is left to do and discover.