I have been thinking lately about how helpful it is to reframe major challenges in life as adventure.
You know how sometimes you’ll be going through something and someone will try to comfort you by saying, well, it will make a great story later, won’t it? What if we could embrace the great story now?
It sounds crazy, but I think my life is just as much, if not more of an adventure, here in the everyday with a baby, classes, and trying to be faithful to God as it was living in China and traveling the world. I’m trying to be grateful for the adventure as I’m living it rather than tomorrow or in a couple years. I’d love to hear how you do that in your lives!
I’ve also been reading Sacred Pauses and just hit the chapter on silence, which you know is my jam. My mind was kind of blown by the idea that none of us have actually ever experienced silence, the true absence of sound, and that silence in general actually makes us more attuned to the presence of small, overlooked, everyday sounds. The author used this to encourage us that God is always working, especially in the silence, a truth that has been powerful and poignant for me over the years, too.
It’s finally a little warmer, though there’s still heaps of snow on the ground. Yesterday our little family took a lovely, cozy walk through the snow. I just love how it crunches under your feet. About a year ago, a friend gave us the children’s book, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, because our daughter, who will turn one next weekend, was born in between two snow storms. It is my favorite children’s book that we own, and I’ve been reading it to her a lot lately and reminiscing about her coming into the world amidst slow flakes coming down in the wee hours of the morning.
Yes, I’m adult, yes, I was raised in Wisconsin, but there’s still something so magical to me when it snows. I remember my husband trying to describe snow to his students in South China who had never seen such a thing. They were incredulous and full of wonder. I wonder if they will ever see it snow in their lifetime.
Sure, it gets cold out here. But life is quite the adventure anyway.
Happy weekending.
little sacred space 