The Four Virtues: Fortitude or Courage

You can’t spend any amount of time with me without learning that I have a deep love for warrior stories. I never thought I’d find something I love enough to turn me from an only-fiction reader (other than things for my Bible reading) to a big nonfiction reader. Modern military history from a boots-on-the-ground perspective has done that for me.

You can’t hang out with me for very long before you’ll start hearing about Major Richard Winters. My long-suffering husband calls him “my guy.” As far as earthly heroes go, you can’t get much better than Winters. The Lord blessed him with a lot of common grace and he lived a virtuous life.

Side Note: I’ve never found any evidence that Winters was a believer, but ladies, if you need heroes for your sons, Winters is a good one to give them. He’s right up there with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee for leadership, courage, honor, and integrity.

Winters was a paratrooper in WW2. Paratroopers jumped out of perfectly good airplanes to land behind enemy lines and cause chaos. They were often lost, separated, and surrounded. Winters’ catchphrase for his men was “Hang Tough!” It meant calmly endure and do your best. He took that phrase with him into civilian life.

Hang Tough.

This idea is the virtue of fortitude or courage.

“Fortitude allows us to overcome fear and to remain steady in our will in the face of obstacles, but it is always reasoned and reasonable; the person exercising fortitude does not seek danger for danger's sake. Prudence and justice are the virtues through which we decide what needs to be done; fortitude gives us the strength to do it.”[1]

If you look it up in the dictionary, fortitude is defined as “strength of mind that allows one to endure pain or adversity with courage.” It is grit, firmness, endurance, determination, and courage. This is fortitude. Its antonyms are apathy, cowardice, fear, timidity, and irresolution.

Just reading this list of synonyms and antonyms, it is clear that this is a virtue homemakers need.

Personal Fears: Women, in general, tend to be prone to fear. Fear often drives us. Not the dumb-blonde, scary movie, screaming type fear, but deep subconscious fears. We fear for ourselves, for our children, for our people. We fear things and we fear other human beings. If you don’t think you’re driven by fear as a woman, you’re probably not paying attention, or you’ve dressed it up in the classic we just need to be safe, or I know best costumes. Women tend to become hysterical when they think there might be a danger involved. Then, they tyrannically remove all independence from everyone in the name of safety.

We become bossy as soon as a risk rears its ugly head. We clench up and start ordering people around. The ruin we have brought on the world in the name of safety, rooted truly in a deep-seated fear, is staggering and shameful.

The best way for us to combat our fear is to start practicing some level-headed fortitude.

We need to Hang Tough!

Fortitude isn’t rash. Rashness is acting without prudence and usually has disastrous results. A wise and prudent woman isn’t rash. She is brave and enduring. This means seeing and understanding that safety isn’t always the answer. It is often not the answer.

Fortitude is comfort. It is Cheering Strength and Merry Durability.

We women Hang Tough.

We do not allow outside circumstances or inner turmoil to send us into rash irresolution, apathy, or cowardice.

We endure.

We act bravely.

We Hang Tough.

Home Management Fears: Tending our hearths and homes and people is a constant battle against fear. Sickness, chronic health issues, concerns for old age, food worries, appliances, maintenance of the structure we live in, clothing, economics, cars, everything under the umbrella of homemaking can spike our fear. From small worries — what if I burn dinner? — to big worries — what will I do if my spouse dies? —everything in home management carries a bit or a lot of fear with it.

The first thing is to remember that being courageous isn’t ignoring the fears or the problems. We don’t stick our heads in the sand, our fingers in our ears, and loudly start singing to block out the many voices clamoring for our attention and demanding we be filled with anxiety. Courage faces fears. Courage does not leave room for acting in a cowardly, apathetic, or timid manner.

Tending a home, ladies, takes an incredible amount of courage. To look starvation, ruin, bankruptcy, sickness, and even death in the eye takes a spine of steel. To know that on a certain level, catastrophe rests on our shoulders and to go to work, calmly doing our best, requires a high level of fortitude. Not with a hold that strangles everyone into a closet of safety, but doing the best we can do to prudently and justly manage what is before us.

Finding Fortitude: My mom says that stories let us practice being brave before we have to be. Bravery isn’t always facing down a machine gun nest to save your buddies. Bravery can be accepting your husband’s correction, trying a new recipe, admitting when you’ve screwed up, tackling a move, upending your entire routine to accommodate your husband’s work schedule, changing up your systems, dealing with deep-seated structural problems, facing economic downturns, and more. Bravery can simply be sticking at the work day in and day out. There is a lot to be said for simply being present.

One of the best things you can do to start growing some fortitude is to enjoy some good stories. Stories let us walk in the shoes of others and pretend to face what they face to test ourselves. Good stories let us practice being brave.

I’m just gonna say this because so few people do, stories with male heroes are great ways to see this. Don’t believe the lie that you can only connect with other women. Reading male-centric stories can be a great source of courage. Plus, it has the added benefit of helping us better understand and encourage our husbands and sons and provides examples to our daughters of what to look for in a man. Read good stories with virtuous characters, especially the ones with good men.

When you’re reading, look for women quietly enduring. Don’t look for the loud, bossy, leading women. Look for the following, waiting, tending, and loving wives and mothers. They’re the crucibles of feminine courage.

Sarah, Abraham’s wife, endured much. Peter said we’re her daughters if we have a gentle and quiet spirit that doesn’t fear anything fearful. We don’t deny that the world is full of risk, darkness, and death just waiting to rend apart our homes and our people. We don’t deny that at all. It’s true. What we deny is its power to intimidate us into panic or apathy. We look it squarely in the eye, our candle gleaming brightly in our hands, and we endure.

Hang Tough!

[1] www.learnreligions.com/the-cardinal-virtues-542142