April 3: Courage on a Hard Morning

Some mornings you wake up and everything feels heavy before your feet even hit the floor.

Joshua was standing at the edge of something huge. Moses was gone. A whole people was looking to him. Ahead was a river in flood and a land full of walled cities. And God said, three times in a few lines, be strong and courageous.

Notice what God didn’t say. He didn’t say, you won’t be afraid. He said, don’t be afraid, because I am with you wherever you go. The courage wasn’t coming from inside Joshua. It was coming from who walked beside him.

That’s good news on a hard morning. You don’t need to feel brave to do brave things. You need to remember who’s with you, and then take the next step while your hands are still shaking.

For you, right now, that step might be small. Getting out of bed. Making coffee. Not picking up the phone to text the person who always makes it worse. Sitting down for ten minutes with your inventory, even if all you do is reread yesterday’s lines.

Hard mornings also tell you something. They don’t mean the program isn’t working. Old feelings tend to rise when you start to dig, the way mud swirls up when you step into a creek. It settles. Keep walking.

If the heaviness doesn’t lift, tell someone. Call your sponsor or a friend from your meeting and say, plainly, rough morning. You don’t have to explain it well. Saying it out loud to another person takes away some of its weight.

And if this morning came after a night you regret, there’s grace for that too. God’s mercies are new every morning, including this one. Courage today might simply mean starting again.

One thing today

Before noon, spend ten minutes with your Step Four notebook. If you can’t write, read the names you already have and pray for the first one.

A prayer

Lord, I don’t feel strong this morning. Be with me the way You were with Joshua. Help me take the next small step, scared or not, and trust that You’re already ahead of me. Amen.

The step you’re walking this month: Step Four.

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