So What's Your Latest Adventure?

Adventure: An unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.

......  especially the exploration of unknown territory.

**** So a couple weeks ago, Tracy left a comment saying that Tom and I led such adventurous lives. Of course, we chuckled over that. Homebodies R Us? Adventurous? Yet, weeks later, I'm thinking Tracy may be right.  All Christians, (I believe, anyway), enter a great adventure whenever we choose to follow God's specific, custom-made plans. I mean, have you noticed He takes us to places we'd probably not have gone ourselves? That He pulls us out of boats we'd cowered inside and nudges out on hire wires when we'd have preferred sinking into a recliner? After Tracy's comment, I recalled some of my own God-nudged adventures: Getting married. I'd not planned on doing that for at least another ten years (oh, the plans of mice and men...). Learning to become a wife, to keep a home, to cook, to create a thing from nothing. Researching ways to live comfortably without much money. And still learning, still traveling where God leads us as a couple. Having a daughter. At one time I'd planned to never do that (oh, what I'd have missed!). Becoming a good mother and being humbled over and over. Moving across the nation to New York state at 34 when I'd never even traveled farther east than Idaho. Creating a whole other life here, not knowing a soul when I arrived, learning my way around. Falling in love with Jesus at 35, viewing the world in a sparkling new way and allowing Him to create a real me from the phony, faulty one I'd built. Allowing Him to change my mind about, well, nearly everything. Becoming a teacher of adults at church, passing along newly-learned truths to others. Discovering an unfamiliar boldness which had me teaching, counseling others almost daily in a myriad of ways. Becoming the mom of a teenager who then turned into an adult--you parents know the wild adventure just in that. :) Starting this blog--an 8-year ongoing adventure, indeed! Sometimes sharing bits of my life I'd rather keep under wraps. Renting a one-bedroom apartment for 6 months. Purchasing a 4-acre farm and living there 3 challenging, lesson-stuffed, but rewarding years. Acclimating ourselves to country life (which is not simpler!). Experiencing with Tom the loss of his job, then watching God miraculously care for us the next 20 months of unemployment. Downsizing, then actually buying a house while neither of us held an outside job. (Can you say 'miracle'?)  Only some of my adventures, those. My latest? Morphing into a real-life prepper.  Researching online ways to prepare for any emergency and using sales plus coupons to stock-up on groceries and disaster supplies. Preparing now, calmly, rationally, knowing someday it will be too late to prepare. Remaining in faith, trust, but not fear. What I've seen? When God is behind even small tasks, they come packed with possible excitement. Parts of any God-designed adventure are beyond our innate ability so that without reliance upon Him we'll, well, fail.  For the glory to truly belong to God, He must actually be involved in the doing of a thing. God is not the author of boredom or uselessness. He's the author, the creator, of this world, this life, which is still incredible--as long as He's in charge of the living of it. ************ "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We will always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 **** A passionate love for Jesus changes everything.