Adventure Awaits

Proverbs 16:9 (NIV) "In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps."

"Come on! It will be an adventure!" 

This is a mom sentence I have uttered many times throughout my children's lives. When the children were quite young, about preschool age, we frequently took nature walks. The walks began as excursions around our neighborhood and evolved into hikes at the various metro-parks around the Toledo area where we lived. We would stop and take notice of small creatures and nature items. In order to leave everything undisturbed we would open our sketch books from quaillanepress, and draw and label what we observed. We decided this would be the kindest way to "collect"our findings. The walks took on a life of their own and my daughter decided we would be known as the Nature Explorers. Like any respectable club we decided we needed some mark of membership. The rings pictured above are our Nature explorer membership rings thanks to the Etsy artist YOUgNeek. (2 orange for the girls and the black and green for our sole male member.)

One day as we were walking my daughter made the observation that the needle in her ring could "not POSSIBLY be right" because the needle spun all around even though she was walking in a steady direction. I had to break it to her that the rings were more symbolic and a metaphor than practical functioning pieces to help us out of a directional mix-up.

A GPS may be more reliable, right? However we found this may not always be the case deep in the heart of Texas. Our summer trips to Texas were another time I excitedly effused my, "Come on! It will be an ADVENTURE!" mom imperative. When we would travel with my husband for business we would drop him off at his meetings set the GPS and take the car on adventures for the day. One such sweltering Texas July day we did just that and set out to find a small family owned kolache bakery. 17 minutes was the estimated arrival time, but an hour later we were still driving around. (Unbeknownst to me at the time, in more rural areas Texas may have "old county" "business" and "highway" listed with the same number yet marking different roads, which makes finding the exact location a bit trickier if one has not the most updated GPS maps package.) The sun was starting to set, my daughter had to use the facilities, and my son was whining in general. I pulled off on one of the service roads gas station. My daughter found relief, my son found a bonafide bull whip (only in the heart of Texas at a convenience station), and I found a renewed sense of adventure as I paid the man for the bull whip, inquired about the bakery location and we headed back to the car. With the service station attendant's directions we located the bakery in seven minutes, kolaches were acquired and all was well in our worlds.

When our family decided to move to Vietnam the phrase was uttered once again, "It will be an adventure!" To which my daughter replied, "So mom will get lost and Henry will get a dangerous weapon." 

I joked back, "Perhaps, and don't forget the sweet kolache possibilities!" So what have I, as a mom adventurer, learned from these escapades?

1. Pay attention, take note, or in the excitement of the daring you may just miss the quiet amazing.

2. Set and prepare your guiding instruments to be true and accurate. Psalm 119:105

3. When you feel like abandoning the whole venture of adventure persist, ask for assistance, and keep going. You never know how close you are to sweet success.