Eight days.
Really? Race/Release Week has arrived much too soon.
I remember
the day it hit me that the baby I’d been carrying for 8 months had to
come out. She wasn't going to stay in there forever, and she wasn't going to get smaller either. Dang. Birthing her was going to hurt. No matter how much I wanted to hold my baby, I was scared, shaking-in-my-boots-Cowardly-Lion kind of scared.
Like me, the lion in
the Wizard of Oz didn’t understand that it was okay to be afraid. What truly
mattered was how one acted in the face of fear. Throughout the story, the lion showed his true courage.
The heroine
in The Ruby Brooch is a paramedic on a quest to find her birth parents in the
year 1852. She too is afraid. While the lion was afraid of being inadequate,
Kit's afraid of being loved. People who love her—die, and she doesn't want to lose anyone else. Yet she exhibits courage time and time again by risking
her life to save others.
Like being
8 months pregnant and afraid to birth a baby, I've been afraid to release my book and subject myself to criticism and rejection. That’s why, after all these years, it’s still sitting on my virtual desk. Its time, however, has
come.
The Run the
Bluegrass Half-Marathon Finisher’s Medal is, in a way, my Cowardly Lion’s Courage
Medal—a visible sign of an invisible reality. Fear takes courage to overcome. If I hadn’t overcome my fear years
ago, I would never have finished the story. Heck, I probably would never have
even started it. If I hadn’t overcome
my fear of exercise, I would never have run more than two miles.
Courage. Sometimes it’s buried so far below the
surface that it takes a tornado to uproot it. But it’s in there. All you have to do is your best imitation of
the Cowardly Lion.
“Put 'em
up, put 'em up! Which one of you first? I'll fight you both together if you
want. I'll fight you with one paw tied behind my back. I'll fight you standing
on one foot. I'll fight you with my eyes closed . . .”
What are
you going to fight today? Whatever it is, put one paw behind your back and go
for it.
Happy
writing and running, Kathy
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