“There’s nobody here, everyone’s gone,” she said.

Karina’s 91 year old grandmother was stuck in her apartment in a now abandoned building in the Ukraine, which had been her home for the past 62 years.  She’d lived through WW1, Stalin’s famine where her whole family had to exist on one piece of bread a day to survive, the Chernobyl disaster, and now this.  Karina’s job was to get her out of the Ukraine and safely to Australia.

This story struck me this week as I’ve been writing a presentation on courage for a women’s conference next month.  And as I reflect on it, the subject could not be more fitting alongside the Easter story.  When we think of courage, we think of Big C Courage like Karina White’s smuggling of her grandmother out of her war-torn home.

But most days, our lives do not command so much of us. Instead, courage whispers to us in little invitations “with a small c”:

• To start a new project or venture, or talk to a stranger;
• To continue the mundane tasks of life and work when we don’t feel encouraged or seen; or ultimately
• To finish something, surrender and let it go.

Last year one of my coaching clients talked to me about a work project.  In describing it she used the word “hate” several times, which was not usually part of her vocabulary.  As I drew her attention to this, I asked her, “why are you continuing with the project, when clearly it is sucking the life out of you?  “Because we need the extra money,” she said.  

Life abhors a vacuum, and one thing I have learned is that you must release something to make space for something better.

With everything on her plate at the time, she re-organised her life and let go of the project.  She made time for her family, which was a blessing as her elderly father died earlier than expected, several weeks later.  She was able to be there with and for him. 

Within 6 weeks, she was invited to apply for a facilitation role in an area she loved.  Courage might be disguised in the small invitations, and only later be appreciated as something far greater.

As you contemplate your place in the world this Easter, consider this;

• How might you extend yourself, start or learn something new?
• Where might this season require you to continue, even when it feels hard and thankless; and 
• What might you let go of, in the hope of something better?