The Greatest Adventure

Writing the first post of a blog is tricky. Where to begin? What to say? Who’s my audience? Well, at least the last one is easy to answer- my mom and my sister, for now.

~But even that has huge pressure attached. My sister just got her MA in creative writing, and my mom is about to embark on an E.D.D. in writing curricula. (For those of you that do not closely follow Doctoral education programs- she’s about to be one of the most qualified people IN THE WORLD to teach writing.) At least they love me. And my mom did teach ME to write, so that’s a start.

I wrote a lot of papers in College, but I was studying Theatre. So the topic range was limited. I wrote a Xanga blog one year. You know what I like best about blogging as opposed to academic writing? I can Capitalize anything I want. (You may have noticed.) I also like that I can change topic from day-to-day. Professors do not like when you keep changing the Topic on them. I also like Feedback. The sense of community you get with other on-line folks.Way more fulfilling than little scrawled comments in red ink.

I am close with my family. We love to sit around and talk about things while eating good food. We have shared a lot of good times and hard times, and we love each other more because of them. But one thing we do Not have in common is the desire for higher education. (My sister’s husband is the only one left to get a master’s degree, and he’s on his way!) Watching my sister graduate last weekend, my husband whispered, “I’m so glad you don’t want to do this” and I nodded- because commencements are boring. My butt got sore. We’re Super proud of my sister’s achievement. And we’ll continue to support my fascinating family’s interesting pursuits. We just don’t ever want to go to school again. We’re over 30. We’re done.

No, we have more unique, unconventional, may I even say Bizarre goals in mind. First on the list is spending at least 6 months following the Renaissance festival circuit. (More on that later.) While doing this, we want to live in an RV. We want to buy some land and build an unconventional house. (We like lots of styles, but earth-sheltered is winning out.) I want some sheep so I can make art. (Again- I’ll explain later.)  Adam (my husband) wants to write more music. Together (and singly) we want to write novels. We want to travel. We want to live in intentional simplicity with like-minded others. We want to grow (most of) our food. We want to Sell This House so we can get going already! (You know what else I like about blogging? I can use all the parentheticals I want. See?)

Most of all, we want to find God’s place for us. We feel like we have a lot of interesting talents. But neither of us have the talent of holding down a “job” without losing our minds. Over a year ago, we prayed and asked the Lord to let us start over. We realized that we had made a lot of choices about life, intentionally and un-, along the way, but they did not lead us to a place where we were happy. So we’re starting over.

I’ve been reading Psalm 37 this week. A lot of people know verse 4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Nice verse. But I like the whole Psalm. It’s about the blessings given to the the righteous. The righteous inherit the land. They will have little, but the Lord will uphold them. They will be protected, they will have plenty, they will have a Future, they find Salvation.

In David’s time, righteousness was something you worked at. But for me, righteousness comes through Christ. Righteousness has been Given to me! That means that all these blessings on the righteous are blessings for me!

It’s encouraging, because I know for sure that God, like my family, is watching me with bemusement, not judgement. There’s pressure to make Him proud, but there’s also the certainty that He loves me -even if i mess up or act weird. That He has good plans for me. That if we make our new start about seeking Him, we’ll also find the Promised Land. We can step out into the unknown, and Know that He is guiding us. That’s the big adventure.