beauty{full}: brave

I have always stuck out like a sore thumb. Tall and blonde in a small and wonderfully Asian culture, if I stepped out of the house, people were watching. In fact, once we moved to the kampung, I didn't even have to walk through my front door: a small alley ran right in front of our home, and my mom put up curtains so that we could eat our meals without being watched by a large contingent of children with their faces pressed up against our windows.

Then when we hit our first deployment, I was one of the first in our group of young military wives to go through one, and I sensed them watching me, waiting to see how I would do, how I would handle it--especially pregnant with our first child. No pressure...

Still, it has been nothing compared to these last few months. For the first time, probably, I have found myself to be a source of gossip. I don't mean bad gossip. I just mean that this is a crazy story and people are retelling it. At least once a month, one of my friends tells me, laughingly, that she over-heard someone at some function asking if they'd heard about the deployed spouse with two toddlers who is now pregnant with twins. The "Hey! I know her!" ice breaker is hard to resist. Trust me, my mother has used my height as an ice breaker for years--I'm an excellent ice breaker.

I don't really mind. Nobody lives in a bubble. People are watching. I learned this at an early age. It has proved to be a challenge to me, probably in a good way, but a constant challenge to be brave--not fake--but to speak my reality in a way that somehow still brings glory to Christ.

One of the traditions the boys and I do around meal times is the lighting of a candle. As the flame touches the wick, we talk about what it means to let the Light of the world shine through us in the every day. The funny thing is that as the story of the twins has circulated our small base, my opportunities to let my light shine have increased a thousand fold. I can allow my fears and failures and need for grace to point to Christ and reach a much larger audience than I even realize: the neighbors who stop me as I walk the dog (boys in tow), the curious shoppers who want to ask when I'm due, even (maybe especially) the doctors and nurses who will see me deliver these babies without my husband by my side.

So today, I'm going to ask you to pray for me: to be brave--again, not fake, never fake--but brave enough to use my words and my life to point to Christ, to real Truth, to His endless Grace, even when there are more moments of fear and exhaustion and frustration than I care to count. Pray that I will be brave enough to not waste this opportunity to be light. Pray that I will remember that all bravery is rooted in Christ's grace towards me.

I'm planning to print out and frame this printable soon.

And thank you: for providing me this opportunity to be brave with my words by reading what I write here and responding to me with such encouragement and compassion. I'm grateful. This bravery, I'm learning, is a beautiful thing--even when it means forcing myself to write daily for 31 days straight and feeling like I'm driving you all insane with my ceaseless drivel.

The boys and I have been enjoying this song together lately, and I wanted to share. I also wanted to ask you if you would be willing to go out on a limb and share back with me an area where you have been challenged to bravery lately. And we all know I don't do "reader response" requests very often, so humour me. I'm pregnant, and my husband's deployed--how can you say no to this massive belly? But watch the video first. Preferably while trying out your best dance moves--I did, and they were womb-shakingly epic.

{If you're looking for the rest of this series, all the links can be found here. Thank you so much for joining with me this month.}