2019: The Year of Adventure

The one word I chose for myself for 2019 was adventure.

I struggled a bit with the word initially because it sounded so entitled, but that’s not how I meant it.

I have issues with contentment and part of the reason I chose the word was to find the adventure in the every day.

When the year began we had a pile of savings that I had initially planned to be for a Europe trip but I knew God was asking us to do something different with the money.

Halfway through the year we began the process to start fostering (we used a lot of that Europe money to make a few changes to our home to allow for another bedroom and more space to play) and the real adventure began.

We got our first placement in October and we have no idea how long they will be with us.

Honestly, we feel like God called us to foster but it has not been easy. We often find ourselves puzzled as to why He called us, people who aren’t that patient, nor that great with kids, to foster. It has stretched us and often left us feeling quite alone.

This month I read The Two Towers and Frodo and Sam have this great chat that I just love, it felt so fitting:

“I don’t like anything here at all,” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”

“Yes, that is so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d know more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. 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 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, thought 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?”

I couldn’t help but feel like Tolkien wrote those words just for me to read right now, they have been really encouraging.

I will be sharing my word for 2020 later this week. I’ve got to say, after this last year I was really hoping for a word like rest but God seems to have different plans . . .