You can't be brave until you're scared

We have been crazy blessed in where we were able to raise our kids.  We live in a small town where you almost always run into people you know at the grocery store.  Steve's preschool teacher and high school physics teacher both live within a couple blocks of our house.

My kids left our wonderful little town and they are never coming back.  They went to college out of state and they got jobs out of state and now they both live far away from us. It was scary but it was the right thing to do.  It's not the right choice for everybody, but it was the right choice for them.

When our kids were young, and they were scared, Jim would tell them "You can't be brave until you're scared".  Then he would push them down the hill upside down on the zipline.

He wanted them to see fear as a launching pad, not a roadblock. 

Aspiring performers have to be independent and brave.  They need to learn to work with creative people who don't live by schedules and may or may not get critical work done on time.  They have to recruit co-writers and band members, and pitch themselves to coffee houses and bars and hopefully someday, publishing houses and labels.  They need to stand up on stage and sing for a long time, whether they have a big engaged audience or 3 indifferent coffee drinkers.

+Mackenzie Elliott

I have learned that some successful performers never get over their stage fright.  They have learned to use fear for adrenaline instead of letting it take them down.

Fear can be paralyzing, even when you believe deeply that God is in charge.  So my prayer for our aspiring pop star is that she knows you can't avoid fear.  But you can't be brave until you're scared.