Adventure

I haven't blogged in so long. No good reasons, just excuses. We went to the Right Now conference a few weeks ago (that could be an entire blog on its own) and one of the side sessions I went to was about writing your life story, and she made one point that has inspired me to write a blog entry again. She said that people need to hear your story. Either your story is universal enough that people can relate, or its unique enough they can learn something new from it. But write something. I have a few blogs spinning around in my head, so here is the first one.
Back in July we were in Glorieta and I went to the prayer garden to pray for a few minutes. I begin to pray about the fact that our lives right now are kind of boring. So I prayed for God to do something to add some excitement to our lives. Even though Jason and I work at a church, we don't live a life of surrendering to the Lord on a day to day basis. We are just at church like average families, when we are suppposed to be because that is what you are supposed to do, and we happen to get a paycheck for it. There's nothing wrong with being average I guess for most people, but I don't want to be average.
A few weeks after that we had our sweet friends Trey and Randi over and their kids, and they were telling us of their adventure of surrendering to missions. They were just commissioned last week to go on the foreign mission field in the spring. I was jealous. I don't necessarily want to go where they are going, but I was jealous of their adventure. Going into the unknown because God told you to and hanging on for the ride, waiting for him to provide at the last minute when you don't know what the next day will bring. That's exciting.
Then I read Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Amazing! And just what I have been praying for. Its all about that our lives are a story, and if your story is boring, change it. God intended for our lives to have conflict, adventure, a climax, times when we grow and change because we are living an adventure. He realized his life was boring, so he biked across the country, hiked the mountains in Peru, started a new mentoring ministry. I read the book in two days, and when Jason is finished with it, I want to read it again with a highlighter. So inspiring.
So that's what God has been doing in my heart. Has anything changed per se? No, but I'm on the lookout. Donald autographed our book (Jason went to high school with him) "thanks for living such a great story." And I'm sure to some people we do. Being at our 4th church, "working for the Lord" on a daily basis. We don't feel that though. I have moments of adventure, when I planned a successful mission project for our preschool, or took our boys to buy stuff for the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. But most days are doing dishes and laundry and soccer games and changing diapers. I have had older moms tell me that its ok, this is just the time of my life when its kind of boring, that God understands. But I don't want it to be like that. I don't want to wait another 18 years for my kids to grow up before my life gets exciting. So what do I do? Right now I am just praying and looking out for moments of adventure. Maybe if I keep my eyes and heart open for them, I won't miss them as easily. And maybe God is preparing us for a big adventure coming up, getting me excited so when it comes I'm not overwhelmed. We'll see.
My favorite song right now is Motions by Matthew West. Some of the lines are "I don't want to go through the motions. I don't want to go one more day, without your all consuming passion inside of me. I don't want to spend my whole life asking what if I had given everything instead of going through the motions." I think that's right, that's from memory. That is my prayer right now. God is not safe, but he's good. That another blog, maybe for tomorrow.