Not all courage wears a uniform or marches in formation. On Veterans Day, we honor those who have risked everything for their country – and rightly so. Yet courage also lives quietly among us, showing up in ways that may never earn a medal but still strengthen the soul.
There’s the courage of the caregiver, for instance – the one who rises each morning to face another day of repetition and heartbreak.
When my sister and I cared for our mother during her Alzheimer’s years, we learned that bravery sometimes means loving through confusion, answering the same question for the 50th time, and finding beauty in the fragments that remain. As Galatians 6:9 reminds us, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Then there’s the courage of conviction – the kind that quietly steps away when conscience demands it, even from an organization or community once cherished. Standing firm without bitterness is no small act of bravery. So is forgiving the friend who walked away or learning to wish happiness for the one who chose another path. “Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord,” Psalm 31:24 says. Sometimes that strength means releasing rather than holding on.
There’s courage in living alone for a time, too – believing that you can make it, that you can still build a meaningful life while waiting, trusting, hoping. It’s the courage of faith, of believing that your story isn’t over, even when it takes turns you never saw coming.
Perhaps the earliest courage of all that I have encountered in my life was one I barely remember – when, as a toddler with polio, I simply fought to keep living. My parents and sister, though, surely knew the fear and the faith of that season. Courage often begins in others before it blossoms in us.
Every life holds such moments – decisions that require steady hearts rather than public acclaim. The widow who faces an empty table with gratitude anyway. The teacher who stays late to help a struggling student. The neighbor who keeps praying for a prodigal child. The believer who keeps trusting when God seems silent. These are the quiet veterans of faith – people who have fought unseen battles and come through, maybe scarred, but still standing.
On this Veterans Day, we salute those whose bravery defends freedom. Let’s also honor those who fight the quieter wars – against despair, against resentment, against fear. For “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
The veterans we honor today remind us that bravery isn’t about absence of fear but the resolve to act in spite of it. Their service invites us to find our own ways to be faithful and strong – in homes, in friendships, in the daily choices that test our hearts.
In my favorite movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” the Cowardly Lion discovers that the courage he sought had always been quietly waiting inside him. I think faith works like that. God plants strength within us, even when we feel fainthearted, and then gently reveals it through the very trials we wish would pass.
With his help, we can find that we’ve had courage – not of our own making, but of his steady grace – all along.
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Sallie Rose Hollis lives in Ruston and retired from Louisiana Tech as an associate professor of journalism and the assistant director of the News Bureau. She can be contacted at sallierose@mail.com.
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