"Courage" by Samara

This is a writing assignment by Samara she made on 29 Jan 2013

Courage

Courage, the ability to conquer fear or despair.  In the song, "Nephi's Courage," it sings:
"...Nephi was courageous, this was his reply: I will go, I will do..." 

I feel courage is a good thing in our lives.  I think courage is whenever there is something you're scared of.  Whether it's something yucky or giant man-eating spiders, you go ahead, take the risks and brave it.  I also think courage is anything that is hard for you to accomplish and you do it anyway; that means you have courage when you brave the frigid air outside, or walk by the fence with the scare dog behind it.

Someone who I think is courageous is Corrie Tenboom.  During the world war two, she harbored a Jewish baby.  By way of a false wall in her bedroom, she courageously harbored many desperate Jews. One day a man came to Corrie's home pleading for 600 gilders, because his wife was in prison.  Corrie decided to give him the money.  He turned out to be a German spy, and later that day Corrie's home was raided.  Corrie and her sister Betsie were arrested and sent to a concentration camp.  Even though they were forced to labor all day and were exhausted in the evenings, they held secret Bible meetings with their Bibles they had risked concealing.  Later, after Corrie had been released she was speaking at one of her meetings when she spotted a man she remembered from one of the concentration camps, who had been a guard.  After the meeting, he approached her asking forgiveness; she courageously forgave him.

Corrie did something that was hard for her to do.  She also kept believing in God even though there were risks and she was living in impossible conditions.

The dictionary's definition states that courage is conquering your fears or despair.  My definition of courage is that courage is anything that is hard or scary for you to do.  The definitions are the same because they both talk about doing hard things.  They differ because  I believe that courage can be all things that are hard or scary; the dictionary says that courage is doing things that conquer fear or despair.