Courage is Relative

"I know it's something God wants me to start living out, but often it's hard to know where to start."
Very nearly a year ago, my first post here talked a little bit about courage. About how I felt like it was time for me to start telling my story - but how that took a lot more bravery than I thought I had at the time.
What fascinates me most of all is that back then, my idea of brave was to write that bit of my story. Back then, honestly, that terrified me. And, if I'm being really honest, I still really struggle with making myself vulnerable. It just doesn't come naturally to me. Learning to have the courage to be vulnerable plays a huge part in what I've been learning lately, so I'll unpack what that means in more detail another day.
The thing that's really struck me, though, as I've thought about my journey over this past year, is how much my concept of what counts as "brave" has changed. I'm doing things now that even thinking about doing twelve months ago would have had me paralysed in terror.

Making Sense of the Chaos

"What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun"

(Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV)

Nor, it turns out, is there anything new in all of the posts I've been writing so far this year. 

It's been one of those times, again, where everything's been a bit overwhelming. My 26 years of life so far have been a constant, steady stream of all-or-nothing, and this has definitely been one of the "all" times. So much has been going on at once, and I've barely had a spare moment to write any of it down. Things to do, things to read, people to meet, plans to make. Everything's felt new, fresh, exciting. 

Except the funny thing is that, in all of the "newness", there really hasn't been anything new after all.