Maybe courage is trusting when we don’t know what is next, leaning into the hard and knowing that it will be hard, but more, God will be near. Maybe bravery is just looking fear in the face and telling it that it does not win because we have known the Lord here. We have known the Lord in the long dark night.

Maybe that is just it. Though we tremble and feel uncertain, courage means we press into a God who is certain, sure, steady. He carries us; He lifts our heads. And His unfailing love and comfort become our courage and our hope.

What does it mean, Lord, to be faithful?

Faithfulness is what we repeatedly do. It is a habit formed of long, hard obedience in the quiet. “Faithfulness is in a million tiny decisions and a million small surrenderings—submitting with a simple Yes, Lord—that create a lifetime of obedience in the extraordinary and in the mundane.” As it turns out, faithfulness was in the ordinary, in the everyday things that do not feel glorious but, in fact, lead us to His feet.

Friend, faithfulness is what we repeatedly do, whether or not we see the results.

Faithfulness is when we pour into hard people over and over, when we continue to serve in difficult situations, when we intentionally choose to lean into Him in our troubles as well as our joys. Faithfulness is a habit formed in our hearts when no one is looking, when the day is done and the stars creep out and our call isn’t easy but we don’t turn away.

And ultimately, faithfulness is truly and fully found in the One who pursues us though we thrash against Him, who sits with us as we wait in the silence, who fulfills all His promises with a yes and amen in life everlasting.

God’s faithfulness to me in this season went above and beyond comforting me and helping me find a new song of hope, though that would have been more than enough. Quietly, He was fulfilling another part of His perfect plan for me and my family. In a season of my asking the Lord to open my eyes to His miracles and His goodness, He had opened my heart as well.

But I feel God’s love so strongly for me here, and I know with all certainty that the long dry season has drawn me to Him in a way that I never could have known apart from it. In the stillness and the quiet, in the suffering, I had fallen in love with Jesus all over again.

The little bird sings loud in the early morning dark. And slowly, the sun peeks over the horizon.