A Small, Brave Step

A few weeks ago, I brought my daughter to a club basketball tryout. The club was in a different town and she didn’t know a single person. I saw her nerves grow as we got closer to the gym. She started taking big, deep breaths and doing the fidgety things she tends to do when she gets nervous. As I was pulling up to drop her off, she asked me to come in with her. So we walked in together, to this large gym she had never been to, into a group of kids she had never met. She took one more deep breath, gave me a hug, and then she walked by herself down the stairs into the unknown. I was struck by her bravery in that moment. And then I was instantly transported back to an equally scary time in my own life. 

At the beginning of 8th grade, we moved to a different state and I was starting everything over. New city. New school (moving from a grade of 15 people to a grade of almost 600). I was terrified. I can still feel that visceral fear today. I had always been a part of a team so I was excited about the prospect of trying out for basketball. I still remember that day. Knowing no one, I stepped onto that court feeling scared and completely out of place. The other players had an existing connection, a camaraderie that bonded them. They passed the ball only to each other, never to me, and my initial trepidation turned into full blown terror. I couldn’t do this. I’ll never be one of them. What was I thinking? I left that gym despondent, and I didn’t return. I didn’t come back for the second day of tryouts, and I never played on a basketball team again. 

So as I watched my daughter walk onto that massive court without a single friend, I was overcome by her courage. It’s not that she wasn’t nervous. It’s not that she wasn’t intimidated. But she did it anyway. She took a deep breath. She asked for the help she needed - my  presence by her side as she walked in the door. And then she took those first scary steps. Oftentimes, that’s the hardest thing. Those first few steps into the unknown. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is having fear, and doing it anyway. And courage is not always some big, bold act. Sometimes it’s a small, brave step.

Inspired by her courage, I decided to take a step of my own. I had spent years not doing something I enjoyed because of fear. So when my town’s adult basketball league opened up registration, I took my first step. And last night, this time with my daughter accompanying me through the gym doors, I stepped onto the court thirty years after I first walked off. And I’m not going to lie, I was scared. I was intimidated. These women had been playing together for years. To say nothing of the fact that they had actually been playing for years, where I really only played with my daughter on the playground. But I looked at my brave daughter sitting in the stands. I took a deep breath. And I took the next small, brave step. 

I played my first competitive basketball game in three decades. And let me tell you, it was not for the faint of heart.  I took a fast ball to the face, wheezed my way through the majority of the game and vacillated between the urge to throw up and the urge to pass out, missed a lot more shots than I made, and ended the evening alternating an ice pack between my nose and my knee. But I did it. I experienced the exhilarating feeling of doing the thing that scares you, of managing your fear instead of allowing it to manage you, of taking back a part of me that I left on the court all those years ago. I put myself back in the driver’s seat and told my fear to politely f-off.

I learned that I can do scary things. I learned that we make the things that scare us so much bigger than they really are. I learned the only way to get around fear is straight through it. I learned that it’s not only okay, but necessary to ask for help to do the scary thing. I learned that all it takes is that first small, brave step. 

So what is the thing you’ve been too scared to try? What have you denied yourself because of fear? We often ask ourselves what’s at stake or what we risk by trying something scary. But I wonder what’s at stake or at risk by not trying it. And what’s possible if you do? What if you took that first small, brave step today?