Sense of Adventure

I  was working on my next blog this morning while Olivia happily crawled around the carpet squealing and looking at everything she could feast her eyes on.  She would touch the wall ever so deliberately as if she was trying to determine exactly how it felt and as she went from one item to the next, her eyes slowly fixed upon the door that was cracked partially open.  The opening was maybe an inch wide but it was like a screaming invitation to an adventure, to something grand, to the unknown.  Olivia quickly began making her way over to the door that was ajar and as she drew near she slowed and peaked inside ever so cautiously to see what lay behind the door.  She gently urged the door open and made her way inside where a wonderland of amusement, mystery, and excitement awaited her.  She found her way to...her room.

My daughter's sense of adventure is alive and well and her ripe imagination allows everything in her world to experienced to the fullest.  I can remember times in my life when I viewed my life as an adventure.  A time when the happenings of my day were significant on a more reaching scale than my own mere amusement, a time when it seemed there were invitations to grandeur around every corner and a time when I felt alive.  I think I see my life a bit less like an adventure now.  If I had to describe that time with an image, I felt like I was standing on a mountain overlooking an open plain, and now I still feel like I am on the mountain only I have lost the horizon and am looking only at the ground in front of me.  I need to look up, I need to see where I am going, but I fear that breaking from my current state may leave me realizing I have lost my way. 

My heart longs for a new adventure - life has been so full this past year with us buying a house, having a baby, working, and gettting used to being parents.  For awhile, it seemed that the adventure would be becoming parents - but that's missing the mark.  Where it is wild and crazy being a parent, the adventure for Ang and I must lie in doing something, in being a part of something truly grand and worthwhile.

Let me think about adventures for a second...what makes a great adventure? A great adventure has an interesting plot, something captivating and compelling; it has a series of obstacles that must be overcome (nothing great enough to be deemed an adventure comes without resistance right!), there must be a company of people (a brotherhood, companion, company, someone to share the journey with), it must be something worth laying everything on the line for - there must be a risk/reward in there somewhere and an adventure must change the adventurer in some way.  No great adventure leaves a person unchanged.  I want this.  I want an adventure.  I love my family and I like our life well enough at times but it leaves me yearning for something that really gets my blood pumping, something that compels me and something that I feel like is worthy of the short amount of time we have here on Earth.

I want to feel like Olivia must have felt when she saw that door cracked open.  Curiosity, wonder, mystery - these things gripped her little heart and she went searching for what lay behind the door.    

I want that anticipation.  I want that sense of intrigue.  I want that adventure.   That's my prayer.