Ready for the Next Adventure?

My quarantine is coming to an end. I have tested negative and have had zero symptoms, a very good thing. Most mornings have been fine. My routine is filled with the same things it normally is filled with only I’m in my library instead of my office...oh, and I haven’t shaved in a while. But the afternoons I start to get stir crazy. That’s when I start doing antsy things, going for walks, picking up sticks in the yard, going through the drive-thru at the bank for no good reason, checking Zillow to see if the lake house of our dreams has suddenly materialized since the last time I checked an hour ago.

Yesterday I spent some time chatting up my friend in Buena Vista. It’s been 18 months since her cancer diagnosis. She has completed her course of treatment and is now making the adjustment back to normal life. She has good days and bad days, just like the rest of us. But yesterday she said something in passing that stuck with me. She had remarked about a thirty minute nap she had just taken and said, “Now, I’m ready for the next adventure.”

What an amazing statement.

Here’s someone who has been buffeted by one catastrophe after another since September of 2019, the latest being one of her best friends receiving a cancer diagnosis, and yet she wakes up from a nap prepared for the next adventure. That, my friends, is simply a marvelous way to live. It’s so full of hope and optimism. The great songwriter, Steven Curtis Chapman, calls it...the glorious unknown. It takes a great deal of confidence to live this way, eagerly awaiting the day, confidence in the future. There are many ways to come by this confidence, but for people of faith it amounts to confidence in the one who holds the future. Still, there are days when its easy to fall back into pessimism and hopelessness...days like yesterday, when a young man walks into a grocery store and starts killing people. But even the most devastating news serves as a reminder of the words of Jesus more than 2000 years ago, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”

So, this morning, I am choosing to prepare for the next adventure, charging into the glorious unknown with confidence. 

Just to be on the safe side...no news for me today!