i’m already there

Adventure.

In real life, it’s not what people like to think it is.

I look online, and see people embracing their dreams. People who look inside themselves to “follow their bliss” and go camel trekking in the Sinai desert.  And they somehow forget to remember to include God in what their dreams could be (or maybe they think they have convinced God that camel trekking is what He wanted, too. And maybe it was. I don’t know.).

Or they are moving to remote mountain villages in Honduras with their family. Or making soap out of goat milk and lavender. Or living out of an RV. Or visiting exotic Asia.

And that might seem like adventure–and maybe it is. And I have been there most of my life. I grew up believing that adventure was Somewhere Else. But most of the time, they aren’t. They are just where you are.

At dusk the three of us encountered an elderly lady and her beagle hiking toward us. Teetering along on a walking stick, she wore a motoring cap and held a bunch of wildflowers. I said hello and asked her where she was going. She replied in Welsh, “Rydw i yna yn barod.”…  ‘I’m already there.’

I guess that most adventures are just wherever you happen to be, and sometimes that means going Somewhere Far Away but mostly it’s how you set your heart that makes life the adventure.

And it is good to be content with Where We Are At The Moment, because if we aren’t careful, we can miss the most important, wonderful, beautiful things.

And then they are gone.

And it’s funny how it seems that whenever I get settled in my heart that “I am already there,” God ends up telling me to go somewhere else. (Remember when I finally realized that farm life wasn’t for me?  I ended up on a 20 acre farm.)

So, here we have been at the beautiful farm, and life has been full of adventure. And it seems as if things just happened and we landed here and I have been content with things and before my adventure in spinal meningitis and brain masses, we were thinking about permanency. At least as permanent as mortality can get.

‘Cause this place is my heaven. This is where so many angels (both on earth and in heaven), reside.

{ I actually tend to believe that angels from the other side tend to visit this valley more than other places because it is so like heaven, but that’s just a personal belief.}

And then, I woke up in the ICU and then I was in Room 2010, and that’s when I knew I wasn’t already there anymore. I knew that things had changed, and that God was doing something in my life, and that I was going to be unceremoniously plopped into adventure that I didn’t really care to try…

The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.

And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on, and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same; like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?

My husband came into the hospital room and casually mentioned that after nearly a decade of running his own company, he had decided to let it go and make room for more.

And I protested. I cried. I pleaded. He loves his company and it has been a wonderful, beautiful thing. We have both sacrificed a lot to see it succeed.  And now he was just going to let it go? Sell it off? Like old furniture?

To me, it was like selling a living thing.

And I knew it was hard for him, too. But, I felt it–the feeling when you know it’s right and you’re terrified.

And then a few days later (while I was still in the hospital), he casually mentioned a job offer, and that he was probably going to need to leave as soon as possible for an interview.

And then a few weeks later, he was in Salt Lake. He missed his flight (for the first time ever) in an ironic situation involving it being a holiday weekend and a shuttle full of ski bums. {No offense intended to the bums–I mean skiers.}

I told him there must be a reason and that Heavenly Father probably wanted him to make a difference to someone he would sit with on the later flight.

He called me later and told me that he ended up sitting in between two models.  It was mean to be.  We had a laugh about that.

{Although to be honest, he actually had a good, deep conversation with them–one had retired because she didn’t like the lifestyle and the other liked it but had a little boy she never saw.  John and the retired model told her that her little boy is what really mattered.}

So, they loved him. They loved him a lot.

Not the models. The company.

And they wanted him to start right away. Like tomorrow.

So, we are moving. In three weeks.

To Orlando, Florida.

I lived there for a few years when I was a teenager. I liked the off-season passes to the theme parks and was not as fond of the flying cockroaches. But they probably seemed bigger then because I was littler.

Then again, probably not.  :)

My sister who is a genius and also works as Assistant Chief Counsel at NASA lives nearby.  We will visit her here:

Maybe I can have an unassisted birth in the ocean with the dolphins.

Just kidding.

So, there it is. And here I am. Room for more.

Slow, deep breaths. And try to grasp the idea of Somewhere Else.

And a completely unexpected adventure.

But, first things first–I still haven’t quite mastered getting out of bed for most of the day, and I need to do that. But Here I have landed, and Here I will conquer or die, as the stripling warriors once said.

But, I do find myself wondering what kind of adventure I have gotten myself into:

‘I wonder,” said Frodo. ‘But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.’

So, you don’t have to tell me whether you’ve got a feeling that it’s a happy or sad tale, because I want it to be a surprise! But just keep praying for me that I will make it through without any more epic emotional incidents.

(More on that next week!)

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Tagged as: insights, miracles