(This is part of a Friday series on bravery. Because it’s the topic on my mind lately. If you missed last week’s post, you can read it here.)

I mentioned last week that I recently took a weekend trip to Nashville. It was, in a word, FUN.

On our last day there, a couple friends and I (shoutout to Clay and Danica) ventured out to the Johnny Cash museum. Now, previously, I wasn’t big into Man in Black lore. The extent of my knowledge of the man was pretty much contained to Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of him in Walk the Line.

OH and I may or may not be highly entertained by Cash’s song “Merry Christmas, Mary,” which my sister Nicole and I will take pretty much any and every excuse to break into our in best bass-baritone impression. I’m not joking.

My only other former connection to Johnny Cash? Well, it has to do with a certain 90s Saturday night TV show on which he guested several times.

Yes, I’m talking about Dr. Quinn.

I’m pretty sure when we first went into the museum, I turned to Clay and said, “When I think of Johnny Cash, I think of Dr. Quinn.” Not ten minutes later, we walk into a room with a big screen and there’s the medicine woman herself and hatchet-throwing Sully hanging out with Johnny Cash.

Check it out: on YouTube you can watch one of the full episodes in which not only Johnny but also June Carter Cash guest starred.

So anyway, again, my Johnny Cash background, and perhaps my previous interest level, was minimal when we first entered this museum and yet, I found myself mesmerized as soon as we started perusing yellowed notes and letters, plaques with facts, old clothing and concert costumes, newspaper articles, items from his childhood on through his adult life…

Suddenly I wanted to know everything about Johnny Cash. Because that’s just what happens to me in museums. I’m pretty sure if I went to a museum dedicated to vacuums, I would instantly really care about Dysons and dustbusters. Speaking of which, are dustbusters still a thing?

*****

Here’s the thing that struck me over and over as we walked through that museum:

How did the man keep going? 

I mean, seriously. Johnny Cash faced one difficult thing after another: tragedy, addiction, failure, public humiliation. Did you know he was responsible for a forest fire in California? Next time someone makes fun of me for starting an actual fire in the microwave in our office, I’ve got a new ready reply: “At least I’m not responsible for burning over 500 acres of forest across three mountains!”

But joking aside, I couldn’t stop thinking as we took our time wandering through the museum that it’s amazing that Johnny Cash kept recording music and performing as long as he did…and kept living life, too. 

It’s amazing to me that he didn’t crash and burn once and for all. That he didn’t one day just call it done, the whole thing, and give up clawing his way through darkness and personal demons. That he somehow kept finding ways to rise again, holding on to a faith that couldn’t possibly be called perfect, but that might’ve been more real than a lot of white-washed, untested faiths.

Johnny Cash did a lot of brave things. He served in the Army. He wrote vulnerable lyrics and performed vulnerable songs. He stood up for important causes. He lived his life under the microscope of public perception.

But more than any of that, I think what made Johnny Cash a brave person is that he refused to let failures be the end of his story.

He could’ve slunk away at any time, embraced by the comfort of anonymity. Or he could’ve let one chapter of failure or another define the rest of his story.

But he didn’t. It’s like, after each relapse or arrest, after failed relationships and career lows, something in him said, “This isn’t the end of my story. It might the end of a chapter, but it isn’t the end of my story.”

There’s a verse in Psalm 18 that talks about God bringing us into a wide open space. I love that verse. It’s freeing and exhilarating. I love the way The Message puts it:

But me he caught—reached all the way
    from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
    the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
    but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide-open field;
    I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

I wonder if it’s the kind of thing Johnny Cash might’ve latched onto…God bringing him through chaos, failure, a void in which he was drowning, and into a wide-open field. 

*****

If you were to ask me what my greatest fear is, next to losing a loved one, I’m pretty sure I’d say failure. I hate the thought of failing at things. Hate it. 

And I’m really not a big fan of the chapters in my life that have included failure. Those are the ones I’m sooooo glad are over.

I can think of other chapters I hung out in too long simply because they were comfortable–maybe not even good, but comfortable.

I can think of one chapter, in particular, I let define me for way too long.

And, perhaps most confessional of all, I can think of chapters I’m hesitant to step into for fear of failure.

But I don’t want to be the person who can’t move from one chapter to the next. 

I don’t want to be the person who lets one failure—or even one safe success—hold her in place too long because it’s too scary or discomfiting to move on.

I want to be the person who knows there’s always more to come. Who has her eye on that wide-open field and maybe doesn’t know exactly what’s there…but trusts the one who does.

What I learned from that stroll through the Johnny Cash museum is that sometimes bravery is simply being able to say, “My story isn’t over”…and then walking into the next chapter.

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