Years ago, I was living in Southern California with my young family.  My husband and I decided we wanted to move to a smaller town to raise our kids, perhaps even a different region of the country.  We had family in Texas and had heard great things about Austin, so we visited in the spring.  I loved the area and knew it was the right place to raise our kids as they grew.  We were all disappointed when we didn’t find a house to buy on that trip. We returned to Southern California and continued our internet search for the right house. 

I was a stay-at-home mom homeschooling our kindergartner and third grader.  My husband was a successful sales manager at an environmental firm.  We were living a comfortable and busy life.  AND we knew there was more for us. 

Long story short …  we found a house on the internet and bought it sight unseen.  Our house in California hadn’t sold, and my husband left his well paying job without any idea how he was going to generate income when we got to Texas. 

I was scared.  I had physical manifestations of the fear.  My stomach hurt.  I couldn’t take a deep breath.  It would have been easy for me to go right back to my comfort zone and put a stop to the move.  But I just knew somehow that this was a real opportunity for growth for all of us.  If I allowed the fear to stop me, I knew “the more” wasn’t going to happen – it would just be more of the same.  So I stepped out right in the middle of all that fear and we moved to Texas. 

The house in Texas turned out to be amazing!  The perfect buyer for the house in California came along.  My husband started his own business working from home and our family grew closer and closer as we did life together 24/7, homeschooling and working from home.  All that time together was precious and we created enduring memories. 

I couldn’t have known that eight years after we moved to Texas my husband would be diagnosed with cancer and would pass away shortly thereafter.  If I had allowed the fear to stop me and stayed in California, we wouldn’t have had all that time together as a family.  We packed decades of life into those eight years because we had the courage to step out and take action. 

Courage isn’t about not having any fear.  It’s about facing the fear and doing it afraid.