I bought this wall hanging mostly because it fit it into my suitcase. When you’re packing your life away into two rolling suitcases, space is a premium, and this took up little space. But I also got it because I needed the wildflowers, the wildness of their arrangement, and the reminder: courage, dear heart.

Courage was the theme of that season. In fact, I moved to Thailand to write a book about courage. Our book, A Place Called Braverly centers on living and dreaming bravely and influencing bravery in others. So courage is a journey I’m well familiar with. 

Our Journey to A Place Called Braverly

Kristy and I wrote this book through prayer and conversation with Jesus. We wrote and rewrote and edited some more. Once we had finished nearly the entire book but scrapped most of it. These ideas of courage and bravery didn’t come from concepts we thought of on our own. They came from a journey with the Father—rediscovering His heart and learning how His love completely anchors our courage. 

The book was also inspired by Braverly—a place I’ve talked about a million times on this blog and in my life. I feel nothing but deep love, gratitude, and admiration for this place and the women who make it a living and breathing thing. In its basic form, Braverly is a place that trains women in culinary and sewing skills in Mae Sot, Thailand. In the café, our women make incredible coffee, tea, bagels, salads, and more. They make customers feel at home and learn customer service skills every day. In the sewing center, our women design bags, headbands, and clutches that reflect their personalities and cultures. They stitch together their ideas and designs, creating beautiful products sold in Thailand and the US.

Deeper than that, Braverly’s mission is to empower women from oppressed people groups on the Myanmar/Thailand border, to move past their fears and walk in confidence and truth. Braverly exists to draw women closer to the heart of the Father. We believe Jesus modeled a kind of wholeness of heart everyone can and should experience. So we don’t just train our women to do a job or grow in their skills. We strive to show them the person of Jesus Christ and help them develop their own relationship with Him.

The Heartbeat of Braverly

Each day in the café, we see the challenge to “Live brave. Dream bravely. Influence bravery.” It’s the slogan painted across our wall. By this, we mean that fear won’t stop us. We won’t let fear keep us from trying to learn new things. Fear doesn't stop us from dreaming with the Lord and saying, “Wherever you want me to go and whatever you want me to do, I’ll do!” We won’t let fear win.

From all this and more, A Place Called Braverly was born. The heartbeat of Braverly is so much bigger than Mae Sot, Thailand. It’s something the world needs to hear, to be reminded of, to be challenged by. 

Live brave. 
Dream bravely. 
Influence bravery. 

As we wrote A Place Called Braverly, Kristy and I realized that none of this could happen outside of the Father. All of our brave living, dreaming, and inspiring was shallow outside of who the Father is and who He says we are. Until we root our courage in His love, we will search for bravery in all the wrong places. 

A Book for You

This is the journey of A Place Called Braverly. It’s a book filled with Scripture and personal, vulnerable stories from Kristy and me. Our goal is not only to inspire you but also to challenge you, to push you, to call you higher, to help you step deeper into courageous lives. 

This book was a labor of love in so many ways, and when we wrote it, we thought of you, dear reader. We thought of your heart that needs courage in ways we can’t even understand. 

So, courage, dear heart. Take courage and go on this journey with us. Rediscover your Father’s heart and collide with a God who loves you more than you can even imagine. 

It’s not too late to pre-order your copy of A Place Called Braverly. It’s available at Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Bookshop, and wherever books are sold. You can also pre-order a copy here! 

The post What is A Place Called Braverly? appeared first on Kate Berkey.

This girl, the one who could fit in a crib meant for children, was 13 years old. 

I still remember hearing her age. The air left my lungs. My head spun. My eyes watered. My knees buckled. And I remember the way I couldn’t look her in the eye, because just a week earlier, I had been 13. When I’d first walked into the room, I thought I was so different from the little girl in the crib, but now I knew the truth.

We weren’t so different after all.

We were practically the same age. Our hair was the same color, and our eyes looked so very similar. We both burst with joy when we heard a voice we recognized, felt a touch we knew to be loving and kind. Both made in the image of our sweet Father, He called us Beloved. He knew our needs, and He cared so deeply for them.

In that moment, I had a choice: 

Stare at the wall behind the girl, fidget like the awkward teenager I was, and edge toward the door
or
I could look her in the eye. I could take her hands in my own, stroke her head, and wipe the hair from her face. I could honor her by engaging her, by seeing her. Simply put, I could love her by not looking away.

When I close my eyes today, I can still see this beautiful, 13-year-old girl laying in an isolated room in a Romanian orphanage. Her face is a little blurry—the cruel result of time gone by and new memories that demand space in my mind. But this experience and those emotions are still there, the lingering effects of an encounter with hard realities.

I never want to forget this experience, her face, her eyes. I never want to forget that my first reaction was to look away. And I never want to forget that realization—she and I were not as different as I thought. Because if I had more in common with this girl in a Romanian orphanage, I have to wonder how much I share with the person just down the road.

Confronting our Vulnerabilities

I believe this simple truth—that we have more in common with one another than we realize—is one of the reasons Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourself. It’s why He told us to create space for everyone around our tables and in our homes. Could it be this is why He said those fateful, beautiful, grace-dripping words, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone”? 

Our world is full of hurting people, stories that rip our hearts apart. Humans are exceptionally good at marginalizing one another, separating ourselves from one another. It’s called pride and selfishness and a seemingly innate need to be more than we are. 

But, friend, if we look our neighbor in the eye, we just might see—like my little 13-year-old self saw—that we’re not all that different. 

We all lay awake some nights paralyzed by fears or worries or anxieties. 
We all have beautiful, complex hopes for the future. 
We all wish for love and joy and happiness for our families. 
We all have dysfunction and struggles and secrets. 

When we look into the face of someone who is hurting or marginalized or oppressed, we are confronted with vulnerability. We’re confronted with our own hurts and pain. We’re confronted with our privilege. And it’s deeply uncomfortable.

In that moment, we have a choice:

Look away or see the human staring back at us. 

Ushering in the Sacred

It’s true, we can’t fully engage with every single person or story or injustice in this world. The news is a seemingly never ending parade of the day’s latest challenges. But we do have the capacity and the calling to love our neighbors—to step into vulnerability, to embrace them in their vulnerable state, and be embraced in our own vulnerability. 

When we do that, I believe we usher a little bit of the sacred into our hurting and splintered world. We bring a little bit of Jesus, a little bit of the holy and extraordinary. It doesn’t require traveling to a third world country or donating your life’s savings. Sometimes it simply means talking to the cashier at the grocery store, delivering cookies to your next door neighbor, making conversation with the person who comes alone to church. More times than not, it means looking someone in the eye and listening to her story. Isn’t that what Jesus did over and over again? 

So, may we resist the temptation to look away. May we have the courage to look our neighbor in the eye, and may we bring a little more of the sacred into our ordinary. 

The post Why We Need to have the Courage to Look our Neighbor in the Eye appeared first on Kate Berkey.

It was an honor.
It was a privilege. 
It was humbling. 

I made sure to take off my shoes before I walked into the friend of my friend’s home partly because of culture and partly because of that verse in Exodus. I still believe holy ground exists in things that seem completely mundane or simply different or quite possibly even extraordinary.  

On this night, my friends and I were completely and utterly stuffed after a dinner of curry and naan and rice pudding and sweet donuts soaked in syrup and oil. Each of us tried to stretch our pants a little before sitting on the floor around the family’s table. Kids seemed to come from out of nowhere in this Chicago one bedroom apartment. They crowded around the table with us, focusing on the cartoon playing on the iPad rather than the ragtag group in their living room. Their sweet mother and auntie disappeared into the kitchen despite our constant pleas. 

“Please come sit with us.”
“We don’t need any food.”
“Sit here.” 
“Oh, thank you for the noodles.”
“Please come sit with us.”
“We came to be with you.” 

It was hospitality at its finest, especially to our dear friends from Burma. They passed heaping plates of fried noodles and giant glasses of fruit punch around the table until we all had more than enough. We exhaled slowly, unsure of how another bite of food would fit into our bellies. But this family had given out of what they had, and we would try desperately to honor them. 

Only when we were all happily eating did the sweet mother sit with us—wrapping her beautifully colored skirt around her feet. We did not come to be served by her. We did not come for another meal. We did not come to take. 

We came to be with this family. We came to be with this sweet mother.

As chatter swirled around the room, I saw her fidgeting beside me, fumbling on her phone. I saw the picture then—her son, brand new and beautiful. She passed the phone over me to the friend she knew more than the stranger next to her. 

It was a sacred moment of pride and sorrow like how I imagine Moses’ mother must have felt when she floated him in a basket that she prayed would save him from the river's current and the depths below. 

This boy—her brand new baby—did not come out crying. He did not come out breathing. This sweet mother pushed and cried through pain to give birth to a baby who wasn’t alive. They called him stillborn, but this was not his name. 

We did not come to be served. We did not come for another meal. We did not come to take. 
We came to be with sweet mother. 

In that sterile hospital room just weeks before, there were tears. There were cries. But it didn’t come from her baby. It came from sweet mother and sweet father—refugees in this strange land trying to build a home and life for their family. And in the weeks since this story-defining moment, there would be more tears—from the pain of recovering from childbirth, from the replaying of that moment in her mind, from the moments she could almost feel her son’s body in her arms only to look down and see nothing and no one. 

Often, I write about brave living—how it turns up in the most unexpected places. I’m not going to pretend that I was brave in that moment. I was speechless; I could only reach over and put my hand on sweet mother’s knee. The chatter and the cartoon playing in the background faded. It was a moment for my friend and sweet mother and me—the random stranger who was lucky enough for an invitation to the table. 

Brave living—in that moment—belonged to this sweet mother. Because she did not continue to serve us. She did not stay busy. She did not hide in the kitchen. She sat with her friend and a stranger. And she pulled out one of the only pictures she will ever have of her baby called stillborn. She passed him to us, one of the greatest treasures and sorrows of her heart.

And all we could say was, “He is so beautiful. He is cúndoijja.” 

We made sweet mother smile at the sound of our terrible pronunciation of this beautiful Rohingya word. Her smile, another act of bravery. 

I had no business being in this room, in this space with such a sweet mother—the kind who comforts her crying children, who finds refuge in a new country for their safety, who tries to teach them parts of their culture in a brand new place so different from the old. I had been invited to holy ground that was found in the sacred ordinary. I was surrounded by bravery and humbled by my place at the table. 

We did not come to be served. We did not come for another meal. We did not come to take. 

We came to be with sweet mother—the bravest one in the room. 

The post Stumbling into Holy Ground Moments Around the Table of Refugees appeared first on Kate Berkey.

It feels like the kind of moment we experience after vacation. We have pictures and stories of moments we love. All too eager, we sit down with friends or family and begin to relive these memories, and about two seconds in, we see that look—glazed eyes, disengagement, indifference. 

Listen, your friends and family, don’t really care about that smoothie bowl on day two…or maybe it was day three…no two, and they certainly don’t want to see a picture. C’mon. Let’s just face the facts. 

So, I’m a little afraid to tell this story, because it means so very much to me. Everything about it—the little girl, her family, the building she’s in. Everything. And I’m a little nervous because it’s hard to see glazed eyes and looks of indifference when you’re telling a story that means so very much to you. So give me space. Hear this story. Look at this picture, because I believe it should mean something to you too. 

When you see this picture, you see an absolutely adorable toddler. You’re not wrong. She is beautiful and mischievous and intelligent. She’s learning five languages as a four year old, so conversations with her can get a little tricky. She regularly jumps between Thai, Burmese, Karen, Chinese, and English and leaves me wondering what just happened. 

When I look at this picture, I see a story so much bigger than this girl. I see a story that wrecks me in the most beautiful of ways and inspires me to choose a life of bravery. 

I see her momma—a warrior, a woman of resilience and kindness, a woman who makes me laugh. I see the difficult parts of her story—living in the jungle for months at a time to escape the oppressive rule of Burma's military junta. I see the years she lived in Mae La refugee camp on the border of Thailand and Burma. I see the days she dared to dream about a future that was full of hope and life and light. I see the ways she models a kind of bravery for her children that I only aspire to. 

This girl’s momma strives and tries and sometimes fails, but she continues to strive and try and sometimes fail. Because of this, her daughters will know that fear doesn’t have to control them. They will know that they can try new things, even if they fail or make mistakes. They will know that they can dream for their future, and the Father will honor the desires He puts in their hearts. Her daughters will know a future that is full of hope, light, life, and community, because they have watched their mom pursue this first. 

I see a dare—live brave, dream bravely, influence bravery. Our world is full of catchy phrases, slogans sold on signs at Hobby Lobby, but when I read these words, I see something much deeper than a shallow tune. I see a real-life challenge given to a group of women on the Thailand/Burma border. So many of them come from histories of oppression, and fear becomes the currency through which others try to control them.

But in Jesus, we see another way—a way of courage, of love, of freedom. These women were created to live brave in the day-in-day-out routines and in the big risks. They were designed to dream bravely—to use their gifts and talents to impact their friends, families, communities, and world. And they influence and encourage bravery in those around them as they pursue this kind of life—a life of courage and confidence and wholeheartedness. Because of the way her community embraces this brave dare, this girl will know what it looks like to walk with courage. 

In this picture, I see a future—a little girl who is being taught even now to choose courage over fear, to walk in confidence and truth, to see Jesus in those around her, to honor her story and the stories she’s surrounded by. I see a girl who is a culture shaker, a world changer, a kingdom builder. I see a girl who gets to learn something so beautiful—how to bake cupcakes—because her mother first had a dream to learn how to bake. In this girl, I see a beautiful picture of investing in the generations—in the mommas and papas, sons and daughters, aunties and uncles. There is something so deeply beautiful about the way a whole family can change and transform and pursue the life the Father designed for them when everyone is invited to be part of this change. 

When you look at this picture, you probably just see a cute little girl and flour on a counter. But pause for a moment, and look again.

This girl’s mom has known the worst of the worst, but she has also known resilience, grit, perseverance. She is a woman of joy, a woman who teaches her daughters how to live with courage. This girl's father gave up his citizenship to move into the refugee camp, because he saw a need there. Through his life, his daughters have learned the most beautiful, sacrificial kind of love, empathy, and compassion. Her community comes from so many different backgrounds, but each of them is on a journey to live brave, dream bravely, and influence bravery in those around them. Because of their courage, she is learning and watching and trying and sometimes falling short. 

This beautiful girl—baking cupcakes in Thailand—is the present and the future. She is a representation of the people around us who are watching the way we live. May we be people who choose to live brave and dream bravely in our own lives so that we can encourage this kind of bravery in those around us.

The ripples of this decision have the power to change our families, our friends, our communities, our world. 

The post The Ripples I see in a Single Photograph and Why it Should Matter to You Too appeared first on Kate Berkey.

This week I stepped into a room filled with people who were there to hear from Kristy and me, ask questions, and see for themselves the work we’ve poured ourselves into. Nothing felt more vulnerable than stepping into that space, prying our hands open to let others see the dream we have cultivated for so long. We had one hour to explain it all, and for the sake of our translator, we had to simplify our words while still sharing the most important and complex details. We had to speak about things that are deeply personal to us, ready to hear any critiques the group had. 

This is living brave. 

On the back wall of Braverly, our mantra is painted in big, bold letters. 

Live brave. Dream bravely. Influence bravery.

It’s actually the inspiration for the book we’re writing, the heartbeat of it all. It’s a challenge we give to our women all the time. Daily, they are put in situations that force them to either face their fears and insecurities or run away. Over the years, our women have conquered so much— like the fear of trying something new, like the fear of looking silly, like the fear of failing. 

And here’s the beautiful thing: they are at their best when they choose to live brave every day.

This challenge to live brave, dream bravely, and influence bravery isn’t just for our women. It’s a charge for us. It’s a charge for me. It’s a charge for you.

I have a friend in the States who tries to do something that scares her every day, and she’s my hero. She refuses to let fears or insecurities control her. Instead, she leans into them, knowing that the place she feels the most fear is the place the Father longs to use her the most. 

Sometimes I need to sit with that truth, cling to it, and remind my heart of it. The place I feel the most fear is the place the Father longs to use me the most. 

I remember first hearing that on a podcast by Jonathon David and Melissa Helser, and it continues to rock my world. I can’t fully describe the fear that comes with writing a book, knowing it will get rejected by some agents and publishers. I can’t explain the fear that comes with vulnerably telling some of my story on the pages of said book. I can’t describe the fear that comes when I simply allow people to see the book writing process, people who have the power to question it all. 

We all have these kinds of fears, right? It surrounds our work, our relationships, our place in this world, and for me so much of this fear comes from the feeling of vulnerability. 

Sharing my ideas, opening myself up to criticism, trying something new, sharing my story—all of these things invite vulnerability into my life. It’s so much easier to write in my journal than on my blog. It’s so much easier to keep certain ideas to myself than honestly share them in a meeting. It’s so much easier to gloss over my story than share the really messy parts. 

It’s much harder to step into a room, to take a seat at the table, and share my heart, my work, my ideas, and my story with a group of people. It’s much harder to invest time and effort and energy when there is uncertainty or risk at the end of the conversation. 

But brave living calls us to show up and be seen. It calls us to say yes when our entire body screams no! Brave living is an everyday choice. Sometimes it’s a moment by moment choice. It doesn’t always mean getting on an airplane and moving across the world. Please hear the truth of that, because sometimes brave living is simply looking at the person across the table and saying, “I love you.” Sometimes it’s taking a new job. Sometimes it’s being vulnerable with others. Sometimes it’s going to the small group that seems like it might never click. Sometimes it’s sending that email or text that may never get a response. 

And sometimes it’s learning to sew a bag you don’t know if people will buy. Sometimes it’s figuring out how to make a bagel from scratch. Sometimes it’s making a home in a new country and culture because that’s what’s best your family’s future generations.

If there’s one thing these last nine months have taught me, it’s that living brave is such a daily choice that transcends culture. Our stories are littered with the big and little decisions to live brave, but they are just that—decisions. 

This week, Kristy and I decided to show up and be seen. We shared our dreams, our hearts, and our vision uncertain of how they would be received. We decided to live brave. 

And tomorrow and next week and the week after, we will show up and be seen again. We will share our dreams, our hearts, our vision without knowing the outcome. 

We will choose to live brave. 

What does it look like for you to live brave today? 

The post What it Actually Means to Live Brave appeared first on Kate Berkey.