Forsaken Courage

Forsaken Courage: Death of a Man's Soul

The story I am about to tell you is a true story. It is a story that not many people know about or care to listen to. However it is one of the most important stories to the future of our sons and daughters.

One of my closest friends from my young years called me a few months back. We had a great friendship. We were always catching crawdads, fishing, splitting wood, eating green apples until we got sick. Summers were the best as we would play sharks and minnows at the local pool for hours on end with our friends. We grew up together and then I joined the Marines and he went his way, we never heard from each other again until recently.

Getting a call from this long lost friend brought up some chilling feelings in my soul. See I knew this guy before I was a Catholic. I remember the things we used to do that were not so innocent. At the time I never really thought about it because I really didn't know any better. So I was both excited and concerned about the contact.

We decided to meet up and catch up on old times. When I saw him I was immediately oppressed by his weary look and heavy heart. This could not be my old friend, my buddy that used to make me laugh at the drop of a hat. Where did my friend go?

We talked for a long time my friend and I. As with everyone I meet I tried the best I could to get my faith into the subject of discussion. He was looking and is looking for something to help him rebuild, that is another story for another day. What he has given me permission to tell all who will listen is one of the most important story of our times. So my friend says from experience.......

Men I don't think understand courage anymore. They do not understand that when they act or omit action in a cowardly manner they kill the very soul that God gave them. Satan knows this fact. It is the number one virtue (fortitude) in man that he will attack head on because it is the quickest way to enslave a man's heart and soul.

Keep in mind my friend grew up a protestant, he had no way of knowing the above very Catholic thinking. Also he had no father from the time he was 11 years old so also he had no role model for courage or manhood. My friend continues......

Simplex, I have not lived a very good life. I am broken and often I feel beyond repair. It was a single decision I made many years ago a little before you left for boot camp. Do you remember my girlfriend, Lisa?

I tell him yes I remember her, she was very nice, especially good to you even though you were not so nice at times.

Yes, I was a perfect jerk much of the time. Well I got her pregnant. We did not know what to do we were very scared, not so much me because I knew my mom would just tell me that it was OK and she would help. She has always been like that, she felt that she had to make up for my Dad leaving and so she never wanted to make me feel bad.

What I was afraid of was facing Lisa's father and mother. She was scared to death too. After a couple of days she came to me and asked me if she should have an abortion. There it was, the moment the rest of my life would balance on.

At first it seemed like the best solution, her parents don't find out. I am not smacked around by her Dad, no one gets hurt. The day came around and I took her to the clinic, it felt all wrong from the word go. I had no guts, no balls, just a piece of shit coward sitting there in the car. I let her go through with it.

She was so scared you could see it in her eyes, in her walk, her whole innocence gone in a split second. That was not even the worst part of it. When she came out...she was gone, if she didn't know it was wrong going in, she sure knew it now and so did I!

I failed the test of manhood that day, I was officially and forever more a coward by any standard. My failure had more important consequences. Lisa saw me for the first time as the coward I was. I ruined her for the rest of her life, she would always have this scar that I put on her. Every year on that day or the day we would have had that baby she would remember what I did to her. I also allowed a life that God made for me to be killed for my convenience, for my lack of courage.

I have always felt less of a man from that point on. This one instance in my life shaped me for the rest of it. No one ever understands that the easy way out is usually the wrong way out. For a man with a self inflicted wound to the soul and no courage to make amends is lost forever. The only thing that can bring him back is another man who can teach him how to act with courage.

Of course he is doing his best to repair his soul. I told him the truth that there was never going to be a way to take back what he had done. As a Catholic I told him that I believed that he could be forgiven and still get to heaven, and that he would most certainly spend some time in purgatory as would I. I told him that 90% of all men in today's society were weak and lacked the appropriate level of fortitude and that it was like anything else in that it take practice to get better at being courageous. Start with little situations and work your way up.

As fathers and mothers we need to understand that this could so easily be one of our children, hell it may even be one of us who holds this kind of pain and wound. That is why it is ever so important for us to teach our young men to be courageous in every thing they do. Our sons deserve it, our daughters need that type of protection and respect, and more importantly the slaughter of the innocents needs to be stopped and this is the only way that it will.

Fathers do not teach your sons to make women a conquest, teach your boys to be valiant champions of virtue. Train them up to be tough, intelligent, and gallant. Give them the tools to slay the dragon, the charm to win the fair maiden, and the fortitude to withstand Satan's wicked and forked tongue.

Posted with kind permission of Simplex Vir @ American Rumpo