Tag: raising daughters

October 5, 2021 / Personal

I’m sitting here in a hospital room watching my Michelle sleep as she recovers from surgery. I wrote about her cancer here and here. While I watch her sleep, and help her sit up, and order her meals, and watch the hospital’s medical staff come and go and do their work, I’m thinking about what’s most important to me right now. I think it’s courage. I’m not going to pretend that Michelle has more courage than anyone else. Every one of us has to find the courage inside to deal with life’s challenges and disappointments which catch us by surprise at any point in time. The ancient boy shepherd, David, killed both a lion and a bear while protecting his sheep. Those events led him to enough courage to accept Goliath’s challenge and win.But in reality, it may have taken more relative courage for a younger David just to get through his first night alone with his father’s sheep. I once drove through sheep grazing country in the Wasatch Mountains in central Utah while my co-worker told me about his grandfather and grandfather’s brother who tended sheep all summer in that same region — on their own at 8…