Courage Doesn't Find Us. We Find it.

​I picked my 14 year old Elliott up from a pre-season high school football workout last night. Watching him walk out of the weight room and toward my car - I was overwhelmed with pride. It was like being in one of those movie scenes where a boy magically turns into a man over the course of a short walk.

I wasn't proud because my kid was lifting weights or trying out for the football team. I was proud because he was discovering a key to life.

And that key is this; courage doesn't come knocking at our door. Sometimes we have to go beat its door down.

Elliott has been a football junkie almost since birth. There's no other game he loves more. I think he slept with nurf footballs and not stuffed animals.

Several years ago - he must have been in the 4th or 5th grade - he decided he wanted to put on the pads. He'd played flag football, but he'd never experienced the contact side of the game.

I was nervous about this. Elliott is on the small size for his age. I wasn't as nervous about him getting hurt as I was about him taking a hit that might cause him to lose his love for the game.

I was sitting at practice one night watching him. I remember where I was on the field - I remember where HE was - when he took THAT hit.

I was fifty yards away and could see the tears through his helmet.

I could see his coach coaching him up - encouraging him to get back in there.

He did get back in there, but he was never the same. Not when it came to football.

The thing is, he lost football courage, not football love.

He was as passionate as ever when we were throwing the ball in the yard. He could still rattle off every incoming Notre Dame football recruit and every New York Giants draft choice the last five years. But after the season of that hit, he never mentioned playing contact football again.

A neither did I.

I wanted to. I wanted to nudge him toward courage.

But that's not how courage works. You don't talk people into courage. People eventually grow sick of not being courageous.

One day the things courage is holding us back from makes us mad enough or sad enough or empty enough that we say the hell with that - I'm going to go beat down courage's door.

I'm done watching what the courageous are doing with their lives, I'm going to be courageous too.

We were throwing the ball a few months ago when Elliott told me he was going to go out for the football team. I didn't ask him why. Didn't ask him if he was sure. I didn't even tell him I was proud of him for being courageous.

I simply told him I'll do whatever I can to help him be good at it.

(Ok, I may have done a little song and dance once I got out of his sight 🤷‍♂️, but he doesn't need to know that).

So when that boy walked out of the weight room last night, and when that man climbed in the front seat of the car with me, when I asked him how it went and he said it went good, I knew I was talking to someone who'd just finished knocking on the door of courage.

That fired me up.

Because it's my experience - oh once you start knocking on that door - it's not long before you start beating that thing down.

And once you get that door out of your way, you get a view of the world you've never had before.