I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker today for Five-Minute Friday. The word is encouragement.
What a great word. It brings to mind a pouring in, a filling up of good things. Things that will give you courage. Things that will reward the nerve of you. Things that cheer you on and tell you, “I like you, kid. You’ve got moxie.” And it’s a noun. It’s not just the pouring in, filling up, building up. It’s the state of doing it. It’s the place where these actions are the norm, not the exception.
It freaks my little solitary heart right on out.
Because what if it ends? Or rather, when it ends (because experience has taught me that it usually does)? What then?
Encouragement is great…while it lasts. But when it goes, it leaves a hole. A big, yawning, scary hole. A hole that you warn children and pets to steer clear of, because they’ll tumble right in and break a clavicle or something.
And when it ends, you have to start all over again. And you do. Every time it ends. Because once you’ve been to the magical land of encouragement, you aren’t satisfied living anywhere else.
I think I’ve figured out the key to staying there, though. Have a whole lot of other people living there with you. It’s a mistake to just have one person as your encouragement. That’s too much pressure to put on one person, and sooner or later, this person will notice that s/he is trying to do the work of eleventy dozen people and run away.
You need an army.
If you are an introvert, I highly recommend that the bulk of this army be online. If they’re all in person, you will be exhausted, and then you’ll be the one who wants to run away.
And there will be the hole.
With the darkness.
Maybe dragons.
But have an army. Have people who are willing to fight for you, even when what they’re fighting against is the voice in your head telling you that you can’t go on or can’t do that thing your soul needs to do.
And be that person for them, too. Encouragement works best when it’s shared.
M. Suzanne Terry 
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