When I think of the word “adventure”, my brain almost explodes with so many memory visuals all trying to pop in and out of my head, moving, shoving, all trying to make space for more memories to emerge from the back. I shall share a couple of adventure stories with you.
To me, adventure is “life”. If you do not see life as an adventure, it might be not so fun for you. Everyday God has a new adventure for you to take part in. It might be glamorous, it might not be. It might be right out of James Bond, but it might not be.
Two people can go to the same grocery store, at the same time, on the same day and buy groceries – one could be having an adventure, the other might not be.
You see adventure is a point of view. We should wake up in the mornings and say, “Hey God what do you have for me today?” Set your feet on the ground and go look for the adventure. It is a wonderful romantic, never boring way to look at life.
Take the grocery store adventure example above. I was setting out to find some bedding plants for my garden, I decided to stop in at Superstore and see what they had in their garden center. I stumbled across the most wonderful Lighthouses. Yup that is correct – lighthouses. Now what do bedding plants and lighthouses have to do with each other? Not a darn thing. Which is what makes this such a great adventure - I was not looking for lighthouses!
The next Rising Above banquet is in 2019 – our theme will be, you might have guessed it, “Lighthouses”. More to the point, our colors are black, white, red – but not just any red, Rising Above red and so hard to find. These lighthouses are white and Rising Above Red! What a find, and what an adventure. Now because I wanted to buy ALL the lighthouses, I was even able to make a deal on the price. It was awesome!
I am guessing that for many of you, that type of adventure is not quite what you were thinking when I started talking about the word. I am guessing you had more in mind this…..
You bet, that is me in my white water rafting gear as we set sail down the river in Grande Cache. Now that also was quite the adventure. We set out on a bus from Grande Cache, driven to a very remote place in the forest. We disembarked in all our gear, and proceeded to walk a good half hour into the bush and down a huge hillside to the water. We got loaded into the rafts, 7 of us in each raft and off we went. We started meandering down the river at a lovely pace, relaxing and taking in the scenery around us. Then it proceeded to get a bit rougher and rougher and the commander at the back of the boat starts yelling out “row, row” and the work began and the adrenaline pumped up! The trip on the river in total took 3 hours, sometimes it is faster, sometimes it is slower depending on the speed of the river.
On my particular adventure, several of us ended up in the river, oh not because it got too rough, but because a dear friend of mine decided that he did not have to “live” with me and took a chance that I would eventually forgive him and pushed me over the side of the raft. Yes he is still alive to laugh about it.
Adventure. I am hoping that my two totally different kinds of adventures spark a point somewhere in your soul that you too might start to wake up in the mornings and say, “Hey God, what kind of adventure are we going to have today?” and then my friend, put your feet firmly on that floor and go find it!