I have a confession to make. I have an untamed beast inside me. That beast is is known as adventure. If not fed often, he can get real mean and restless. As a kid, the beast was a puppy. Willing to explore everything within the boundary of home but no farther. I climbed every tree I could, crawled into small dark places, snuck over to the country club and explored the 18th hole, and even played in a graveyard near our house so much that we new most of the names on the tombstones. However, this puppy had a leash. That leash was a painful one...anxiety.
I knew not these chains until one summer in the mid 90s. I was at a church camp in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay. The children's service was held in a gym across the field from the meeting place. Since it was summer, it was hot even in the early evening. The adults serving the kids opened the giant garage doors on the gym to let the air in. Now there were maybe 5-8 adults watching 30+ kids running, screaming, and creating chaos. With the doors being opened, I could see the sky getting black and not from the setting sun. A storm with a drop of God's wrath was brewing. Now being a young kid, I disliked thunderstorms, especially ones that brewed over the water. Being far away from home and not near my parents, I didn't feel safe. I had made up my mind that if I could get out of site, I would make a mad dash to the meeting building and find my parents.
My plan was simple; casually step outside, pretend like I was going to buy a soda (Pennsylvanians call pop soda and since I am recalling this from my childhood, it is presented as I saw/spoke/did it), and when I had the perfect moment, I was going to take off towards the meeting building and not even look back. There was one problem...my plan worked perfectly. I took off and didn't look back. The adults in charge never knew I had left. That thought made me feel insecure about strangers or people in charge of me who weren't my parents. To make matters worse, the storm eventually hit full force and knocked the power out. That was the night the anxiety took over.
For the next seven years, this force of evil controlled me. It made me miss out on a lot of things in life and I hated it, but I couldn't shake it. Finally, someone offered me an herbal remedy to help control nerves and stuff like that. Now I hate taking medicine because to me that means something is wrong and my body can't overcome it on it's own. To me, if I took that herbal remedy, it meant that I had a problem/disease. I didn't want that label and told myself there was nothing wrong with me. I began to branch out and do things that anxiety once controlled. Not long after, the anxiety was gone. In it's place a new animal was birthed. Adventure.
You who have read my past blog posts should know by now my desire to travel. I think the desire is at an all time high now because I am entering my mid 20s, going to be done with college soon, single, not tied down to a job, and have an urging to gain back what the anxiety robbed from me. But there is one thing that supersedes all other reasons...the utter beauty of God's creation.
Year after year, people pay good money to flock to places like the Grand Canyon, Mt. Everest, Angel Falls, the Amazon Rain forest, the Great Barrier Reef, the safaris of Africa, etc. You hear about them and learn about them, but until you see it for yourself, you won't be taken aback that you have to just stop and be still. I want to share with you four examples that I've experienced and you'll maybe see why I crave to see the grandeur on a larger scale.
#1) One summer I was at a cabin on Lake Erie. The sun was slowly calling it quits on the day and I wanted to get in one last Jetskii run. Now if you've never watched a sunset over a large body of water, I highly recommend it while being silent; it's truly magical. I hopped on the Jetskii and roared out onto the lake. I found myself pushing it to it's limits while chasing distraught seagulls for the pleasure of doing so. As I took in the scenery around me, I noticed how beautiful it looked and completely turned the Jetskii off. I sat there adrift as the sun sunk beneath the waters under a golden sky to my right and the moon had risen with the stars in a navy blue sky on my left. It was like the edge of two worlds coming into harmony. Something so beautiful was also powerful enough to make me stop everything in the middle of an adrenaline rush.
#2 and #3) In 2012, I had the pleasure of experiencing how amazing a night sky in the country can look...twice. The first came in January when I had gone down to North Carolina. We were playing a game of manhunt in Cody's backyard. I decided my hiding place would be on the ground behind the garden box. As I laid there, I gazed at the moon and all the stars. I began to reminisce on my childhood and how that was the same moon I had gazed upon all those years ago while playing hide-and-seek, waiting for fireworks on the 4th of July, and even after a Saturday night out on the town. I didn't even care anymore whether or not I would be found. I just enjoyed the scene. Then, in the late summer, I was up in Northern Wisconsin visiting family. It was 11:00 PM and I had left the bunkhouse to bring stuff in from the dock. As I was walking back, I heard the sounds of critters in the night and glanced at the sky. I had to stop dead in my tracks because I couldn't believe how many stars were visible to the naked eye. I live in the city where there is a vast amount of light pollution that blocks out the light of many stars. But here I saw millions of them, twinkling, shining, illuminating the blackness of night. I could see the many constellations I learned about as a kid and imagined myself floating among them. I could've stayed there all night just watching them shine in the vast dimensions of space.
#4) October 2011. I was nearly two full months into my year long Christian internship. We (Ann Arbor, Buffalo, and Cleveland) were asked to make a trip to Fayetteville, WV. I had been there two years before for Bridge Day, but this time around was a little different. After a couple of days in the Gospel, we were given the opportunity to go hiking in the WV mountains. This was the perfect time to go because it was Autumn and the trees were draped in color. We walked up a trail littered in leaves and saw the beauty of a mountain forest. Eventually we went off trail, climbed over large rocks, shimmied up trees and squeezed through tiny crevices until we reached an overlook point. You couldn't help but sit there in awe of the colorful mountainside, the dark blue river that ran through the mountain, and the nature that surrounded it. West Virginia is a wild and wonderful state.
From a sunset/moon rise on an Ohio shore to two midnight skies in NC and Wisconsin to the Autumn mountains of WV, you can see the brilliant artistry of God's hand. The kind that you have to pause and be still at. The kind that takes your breath away. The kind that just makes you appreciate the Lord's love for us. I cannot wait to see where adventure leads me next.
