Daring Adventure...or Nothing

For a while, the thought of this post intimidated me. I suppose because I originally wanted to title it, "My Definition of Daring."

When I realized my mistake, I laughed to myself.

Daring is anything but definitive.

Fear is definitive -- allowing fear to rule in my heart prevents me from becoming all I'm meant to be.

Cowardice is definitive -- cowering in the corner while my King's battle rages on not only keeps me from God's plan for me, it turns me into the antithesis of His design.

Security is mostly a supersitition. It does not exist in nature. ...life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

-- Helen Keller

As much as I would like to fit my life into a neat little category, everything slops over the sides eventually and I'm forced to reevaluate and examine with an objective eye the things that mean the most to me.

Like family and work and writing and dreams.

I'm not so good at that objectivity stuff (it's the artist in me), so... often I forget or deny that life is a daring adventure, whether I'm living in an African village, Buckingham Palace, or a small southern town.

I've never been to those first two places, by the way. And that's my point. Sometimes I let myself belief in the lie that I can't possibly be daring where I am right now, with my stuffed dayplanner and put-on-hold dreams.

It's then that I forget about the daring adventure...and I live in the nothing.

That happens whenever I try to define the daring God calls me to live... or the God who calls me to live it.

God doesn't call us to live in fear, He calls us to live in faith. He doesn't call us to live in cowardice, He calls us to live in courage.

Here's the problem: there is no neat and tidy categorical closet where we can store our hopes and plans and dreams, from which God will throw everything together and ta-da! make a perfect, fulfilling, happy life appear.

Oh, how I wish that weren't true sometimes. And in those times I trade in the daring adventure for the nothing.

Like a bird soaring through the sky or a butterfly lighting for just a moment on the daffodil, the essence of daring is ever-changing for me.

One day, daring means speaking up when I want to be silent.

The next, it means biting my lip until it bleeds because they need a hug, not a sermon.

One day, daring means reaching out to the broken one and just loving them.

The next, it means to keep my nose in my chemistry textbook because He's molding and shaping me now in the midst of this great mystery I like to call college... for a bigger dream, a bigger destiny that I fail to fathom.

Like the bird or the butterfly, daring seems evasive sometimes. Just out of my reach.

Other times I feel like I could reach out and touch it, it's that close.

And then there are days when daring masquerades as foolishness and I want to run from it.

But when I run from His voice calling me...when I feel the fear creeping in...when I'm tempted to cower in the corner and cover my head...

He is persistent and faithful to pursue me wherever I'm hiding.

Because He is a daring God.

And He won't let me settle for the nothing.

I'm so grateful to Him for that.