Adventure is in my blood! Look at a Warrior Princess. A woebegone princess waiting in a tower is a bit boring but having something to fight for while waiting, that’s exciting! Or maybe a couple-mile hike to get the blood pumping, then a rock face to go bouldering on for a little adrenaline. That will do it too! Most recently, my adventure has taken the shape of a move across country to a city where I’ve never been where I’d only met a couple people who would be here before coming.
Sometimes it seems a little silly to think in these “romantic” sort of fairy tale terms but recently I had an interesting revelation about this tendency of mine. I’ll have to share some back story to get you up-to-date.
When I was younger, my craving for adventure took on a much different shape. I had my adventure through books. Although non-readers might fail to see how sitting in one place for hours on end could classify as adventure, let me tell you, I lived in another world. I lived my life through other people’s stories. One summer I joined a reading club at the library and so had reason to document my addictio…I mean, progress. In 60 days I read…drum roll please…18,000 pages equaling well over 100 books, almost 2 books a day for 2 months straight!
Since that time, I’ve been very much convicted of my use of time and matured to the point where I now live my own life and adventure, but novels still have a way of sucking me in so I tend to avoid them to stay safe. Honestly, now I feel guilty when I want to read because I feel like it means that my journey with God isn’t exciting enough to satisfy this craving for adventure. On the rare occasion however, I’ll sneak past my guilt and pick one up again. Saturday afternoon was one of those times. As I started feeling guilty, I was reminded of an interesting perspective that I’ve been reading about.
This perspective about these adventures of the imagination comes from the pens of Jon and Staci Eldredge. (You’re probably familiar with Wild at Heart.) Recently I’ve signed up for their daily reading e-mails that pull sections from their various books. One of their more common themes (I don’t quote this exactly) is the idea of human race being intrigued by stories and fairy tales because it comes closer to the reality we are created for than our current reality suggests. Let me repeat it this way, we love the too-good-to-be-true stories because they fill a longing of something unfulfilled because we were created live a too-good-to-be-true story. We crave adventure because when we were in the Garden, God wove it in to our very being. He wanted to be the source of our thrill, awe and excitement. He wanted to let us desire romance so He could fulfill it by romancing us Himself.
So, my guilt eased slightly, I now begin the discussion with God about what He showed me through this novel I picked up. If this doesn’t happen, then my reading would once again prove pointless, my guilt would be justified and my craving for adventure would once again be misdirected.
--> “Papa, what about this story shows the way you created us to be in the Garden?”
--> “What is truth in this that I can hold onto?”
--> “What part of the too-good-to-be-true that I desperately want to believe can I really believe when it comes to your promises?”
