I don’t know what it is about spring,
but this time every year my desire to go on an adventure is awakened. Something about spring makes me hope that
Peter Pan would come through my window and tell me the Lost Boys need a
mother. Makes me long for a blue Police
Box that is bigger on the inside to bring the Raggedy Doctor into my life, even
if it means I have a lot of running in my future. I want to become the heroine of my story, not
a passive bystander.
I never really know how to put this
feeling into words. I do know that it is
like a fire burning in the pit of my stomach.
It is in the same place where I feel nervousness or shame, but it is an
entirely different feeling. It moves
from my core and spreads through my limbs making me antsy for whatever it is
that is coming my way.
This is the same feeling that has
caused me to try to pack a bag and skip town every time there is a natural or
man-made disaster. More than once my mom
has walked in on me throwing clothes and toiletries into a dufflebag. The first time she didn't even know what to
do with me. She stood in my doorway
asking me what I was doing. “Mom, didn't you hear? There was a tsunami in the
Indian Ocean. It has killed a lot of
people and I need to go help.” She wouldn't let me go. In her defense, I
was only in High school, and didn't have a passport. The same feeling was awakened when Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans. Once again, I
tried to physically go help. Again, mom wouldn't let me.
The cycle continued when I watched
the Invisible Children movie as a senior in High School. I tried to leave, mom put me on lock down. I started to realize that my
intentions were good, but my application did not match where I was in my
life. Instead of trying to do it on my
own, I started talking to my peers. This
was too big to let go without doing something.
We decided that if we cannot go to help fix the problem, we would help
raise money so other people can do what we can’t. We held a benefit concert to raise money and
awareness.
After all of these my hunger for
adventure was satiated, but barely. Now,
nothing is quenching that fire. I was
thinking about this on my way home from giving my siblings a ride to
school. I was struck with how tame our
faith has become. The reason I am so
antsy and so hungry for adventure is because that is what we were created
for. When we look at the stories of the
Ancients of faith we see them walking closely with God, and their stories are
so full of danger, impossibilities, and love.
They live adventurous lives.
The more time you spend with
someone, the more you become like them.
We see this clearly with the disciples.
They spend three years with Jesus, learning to love people alongside their
master. Once Jesus went back to the
Father, they were still on earth to finish out the adventure he had sent them
on. They were healing people, casting
out demons, facing down angry mobs with stones and a few even took on royalty,
all in the name of Christ. There had to
be moments were they looked at each other and asked, “is this real life?” That life is more real and fiery than all the
mediocre, lukewarm lives people live today.
Today I realized that when I am
craving adventure, what I am really craving is a closer connection with
Jesus. The adventure will come
naturally. First, I need to learn how to
walk with Jesus, and hear his voice clearly, and then I can learn to run. It’s not about what I can do, but about how
much I love spending time with God. If I
rest into Him, he will give me the desires of my heart; no deep relationship with
Jesus can be dull. So, let’s do it! Let’s dive in head first and live the dynamic
lives we were created for. No more
boring half asleep lives. It’s time to
wake up and walk so close to the fire of God that we can’t help but light on
fire ourselves.
