Adventure is Right Here

Travis sat across from me, that stern and determined look in his eye. Eliot says that it’s his mad look, when his eyebrows are crinkled down toward each other like that. But I know differently. It means he’s listening.

“We can’t think of this next semester as just a season. It’s life. Tomorrow is our life.”

We’d just heard the sermon that morning, one that tore at our insides and made us want to leap from our chair and throw ourselves at the very throne of God in obedience. He spoke about Jesus and the disciples in that little ramshackle boat, in that big, flailing storm.

He said that Jesus often calls us into a different place than the one we had planned for ourselves, into things unexpected and stormy, at best.

So we took that and remembered about eight months ago, the way we listened for all of this, the way Jesus actually took us up in the crazy storm and called us to faith.

And here, semester 2 of a PhD program and semester 1 of pre-k homeschooling and book writing, we continue onward and hold on tightly.

About a month ago, we hit a really rough few weeks, and the storm was certainly whipping us about. I went to the mailbox and pulled out a white cardboard parcel with the return address of my best friend in the corner.

I opened it to the ombre pink background and golden words. Words that brought big, fat tears out of my eyes and a pulse of hope to my heart. Meg couldn’t have known exactly what she did, and that’s just what made it so holy.

Adventure is right here.

When we constantly think of life as this season, this time, this moment that will pass soon, we forget that the Kingdom encompasses all of our life. It’s every Tuesday morning coffee break and every Sunday afternoon nap time. It’s smoking a pipe and reading Preston Yancey before classes begin.

It’s life being birthed and transformed in every shadow and cracking wave.

We hold on to today. We read and look and invest and engage, and we trust, even as we hold on for dear life to the edge of the boat.

And we thank God for the kindness of our friends along the way, who ease the aches and remind us that we’re in a good place, where adventure meets us at every turn.