By Grace Sweeney.
In 2017 I began struggling with seizures. Nearly every single night (as well as whenever I tried to take a nap) I woke up with a seizure that lasted for up to two minutes. It was terrifying—being shocked awake by a violent shaking that didn’t go away for what sometimes felt like hours, even though it was only a few minutes or seconds.
I was sometimes scared to go to sleep, because I hated the seizures. Going to sleep meant that any minute I could be jolted awake by one. Of course I knew that God was nearby and would take care of me, but it was still one of the hardest things I’ve gone through.
I continued struggling with seizures for two years. Sometimes I’d go for months at a time without having any problems, then bam! I’d wake up with another, even more violent seizure.
But in 2019, the Lord healed me of them completely. I went three months, then six months, then eight months without having any problems. By the time we reached the one-year mark, I knew I was healed.
I’ve been moving through another type of struggle recently, that’s tested my bravery in the same way. Some of you might know that my family and I live overseas in Albania (a small country in Eastern Europe).
We left the States in July of 2022. I’ll admit I cried as the plane took off. I was excited to be traveling and visiting new places, but leaving everything and everyone I’d ever known was and is extremely scary and hard. I’m still finding it hard to move past those feelings of homesickness.
We’ve all had struggles like this. Not specifically like what I shared, but struggles where we have to be brave. Where we have to keep going even when we don’t want to, when we’d rather crawl under a blanket and never come out.
If you’re going through anything like that, I’m praying for you. And I’m here to tell you that you can move through it.
It won’t last. I promise.
You can be brave.
Bravery is something we don’t think about a lot of the time—but it’s still a very real concept. (No, it’s not confined to knights in shining armor in fairy tales.)
There are monsters that threaten to push us to defeat every day. There are always things to be scared of. There are always things that we’ll have to stand up to and push through.
Bravery is something we need to remember every. Single. Day. Whether it’s bravery to push through something we’re going through, or the bravery it takes to step outside of our comfort zone. Courage is a high virtue.
Being brave—pushing through a challenge, or doing something you never thought you could do—is always, always worth it. It could even lead you somewhere you never expected it could. (Yes, even as a young person.)
I’d like to tell you a short story of two young men who did just that: twin brothers Alex and Brett Harris. When they were sixteen, they started a blog (The Rebelution) to share their thoughts about the place Christian teenagers had in the world. It blew up. They began getting thousands of views, comments, and shares.
Two years after starting the blog they co-authored and published the book Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. The book was what the world had been waiting for, it seemed, as it rose to #5 on the Amazon bestseller list. It’s sold over 400,000 copies and been translated into a dozen languages.
With the release of their book, news spread about the twins and their message to the world. They were invited to speak at places all around the world, were interviewed by major news sources, and so on. Their message that teenagers can make a difference in the world reached hundreds of thousands of people.
Imagine if they’d been to scared to launch the blog. Or if they’d hesitated in publishing their book. They never would have had such an impact. God never would have used them to do so much in so many peoples’ lives.
Stepping out in faith, or continuing through something in faith is always the best decision you can make. Yes, it might be hard. Yes, it will probably be scary.
But God is there for His children. He will help you through whatever it is you’re going through. “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,” the Bible says.
Stepping out in faith, pushing through a roadblock, or doing anything else that requires us to be brave is never a wasted effort. Just like God used Alex and Brett to make such an impact, He will use your bravery to do great things too.
We just have to remember to trust Him through it.
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