The joy of the unknown: how can I find Adventure?

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” –G.K. Chesterton

“‘I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.’

‘I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!’” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Adventure—a word that whispers promise and tugs at something inside. Some people seem to always be having adventures, while others seem to never find them. Why does adventure elude so many of us? Actually, it doesn’t. Adventure is everywhere. We just have to see it for what it is, and we will only find the joy of adventure when we learn trust.

No one would have ever thought of me as an adventurer when I was growing up. I was the kind of little girl who hated snowball fights because someone always got hurt and I assumed it would be me.

I hated racing my friends because someone always lost and I assumed it would be me.

I hated talking to strangers because someone would sound stupid and I assumed it would be me.

I was much too afraid of rejection to do anything that would put me in jeopardy, although I didn’t know that yet. So I went blissfully along, my heart too frozen to take risks and try anything new.

Yet the scariest of all imaginable fates could be summed up in one simple sentence:

“I will do anything except be a missionary to China.”

Missionaries have to talk to strangers. Their only business is to care about people. And they have to do this in far, unknown places.

The combination sounded like a fate worse than death.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of travel exactly. I went to Israel when I was eleven, Norway when I was fourteen, and Australia when I was fifteen. Traveling was easy. Going out of my way to love other people was a different story.

People terrified me because they had the power to hurt me. I gave them that power as soon as I started living only to please others.

But when I was in Bible school, God gave me a word: “reckless.” And on that same day, I found God. Yes, I found Him. I had been searching for Him for months, and then He revealed Himself when I was feeling particularly grumpy and ungracious. He showed me how petty I had been and how great He was, and suddenly nothing else mattered. I could throw myself on this God with reckless abandonment, and everything would be okay.

The fear of going to China evaporated that day.

Not that God has or ever will call me to go to China or be a missionary anywhere, but the idea no longer fills me with cold, sweaty dread.

If God calls us to do something, we can trust Him recklessly. We don’t have to know what’s going to happen or how it will all work out because He’s got it all under control.

And then I graduated from Bible school. Boy, was I nervous! I had always known that I was going to go to Bible school. My life had been mapped out up to this point, and now I stared at new, dusky horizons without any idea of what was coming next.

But I had started learning trust.

I had been waking up to Life.

I had been opening up to Love.

And now, the Adventure was about to begin.

I was an explorer like Lewis and Clark, embarking on the journey of a lifetime—my lifetime. Who knew what was around the next river bend? Even Pocahontas couldn’t have been more excited.

When God closed the door to my dream college, the Adventure only got more exciting. God invited me to watch with Him to see His plans unfold. I blogged about it off and on two years ago as I was discovering this, and I can honestly say that the Adventure has only been getting better and better—even though my canoe had to be shattered once so I could get a better one. That is largely why I haven’t written much until recently. 

But in the meantime, I have learned how to love and be loved, and fears that had long crystallized over my heart have gradually been dissolving. And as the fears have gone, the adventures have increased—and so has my ability to see them.

Do you see how all this is connected?

• When we start learning to trust what God says, we start waking to the Life He offers.
• When we start waking to Life, we learn to trust yet more. 
• When we start trusting more, we start believing His Love. 
• When we start believing His Love, we start to love. 

And a life of love and reckless trust is the biggest adventure we could imagine.

Suddenly, the impossible becomes a possibility.

This didn’t just change my spiritual life. It started changing how I lived. As God freed me to embrace His love, I started reaching out to others who needed His love. And in the process, I started opening my heart to people in a way that I never had before. Each day was an opportunity to invent a new prank or find a new way to live the Adventure.

As it happened, one of my new friends struggled to see the Christian life as fun. The initial excitement of finding Jesus had worn off a little, and sometimes all she wanted was to go get a drink, smoke weed, or cut herself just so she could experience that old familiar high and release again. I tried different tactics.

“Hey, want to wade through the swamp with me to grab that bright red branch?”

My friend and a mountain sunrise

“Hey, want to hike the mountain by moonlight?” (We went when it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit at the bottom.)

“Hey, want to go watch the sunrise on the mountain?” 

I can still hardly believe that I was the one who suggested those things. They were so unlike anything a little girl would suggest who was once afraid of a snowball fight.

But God had started a transforming work and had promised to complete it. First, I discovered the Adventure of trusting Him in the unknown. As I learned to trust, I started trying new things: going on this hike or taking that trip—whether it was teaching English in the Middle East for two summers or driving to Florida to work with drug addicts.

And I started learning something else too.

If life really was an Adventure, then difficult things were not just inconveniences. They were opportunities to trust and discover more Adventure.

Just think: this Adventure is available to all of us!

All we have to do is trust God and consider our lives rightly.