Another definition of courage is strength in the face of pain or grief. I have experienced this a lot. Really, I have had moments whilst going to school that tested my metal and my ability to dig in and keep going. The first real test was dealing with Rebekah’s health issues (not gaining weight) while taking 6 credit hours and dealing with my own health issues. So here I am barely functioning because my thyroid was non functional and my numbers where way off normal range. (129 to be exact…normal is under 4) I was nursing my baby who wasn’t gaining weight and as all I wanted was to find the cause and not be blamed. However, I was blamed and I still had homework to do!!! This of course was in addition to taking care of the other kids and making meals and doing laundry. I can’t tell you how tired I was with the numbers I had. I was tired when I woke up at 7am and tired when I went to bed at 7pm and tired in the middle of the day. Brain fog was a major problem…I couldn’t remember anything!!! This was my first major experience with the question why am I even still here???? I felt like a blob!! not a human being. It took what seemed like forever to get to “normal”. I managed to make it through the semester and took the summer off before my numbers stabilized to normal. By that time DCFS had gotten involved with Rebekah. This just meant more appointments and scrutiny!! I was getting beat up from everything!! So I say things have not been that bad, but there are days where I just wonder what and how can I even get up and do. Yet I do! You know I think going through all of those awful experiences at the same time conditioned me to get up regardless if I had strength to do it or not. Having great pain no matter the source of the pain is still difficult to want to do anything. I think the important component to all of this is that I know that Heavenly Father never makes a promise and breaks it, so if I believe that then I know that I can make it no matter what is going on around me or inside of me.