The Adventurer

Sometimes the line between missional living and daily living is a thin one. Sometimes, it’s blurred, and other times it’s non-existent. It takes a lot of understanding to get to that place — that place where we realize it’s not one or the other — it’s both. She understood that.

I met her when we were in college. One of my earliest memories of her was when I had something semi-serious to tell her, and with all the calmness and collectedness in the world, she handled it. Over time, we got to be good friends. She discipled me, shared life with me — I could be fully me, deeply honest, and know that she would receive me and all of my honesty with grace and love.

She had big aspirations — to travel the world, to have adventures and change people’s lives in dramatic ways. Her husband-to-be went to Africa for a few weeks once, and she, back in the States, imagined their lives together there in the future. It fit her to live so boldly. She wanted her life to really matter, and she didn’t want to get stuck in the mundane like everyone else. This life of adventure fit them so perfectly, that when they got married I just assumed, like everyone else, that they would go.

That was all five and a half years ago. While we talked, she was sitting on their couch getting a moment’s rest. This was after she had put their kids to bed and after she threw a couple of loads of laundry in, after making a casserole for a family gathering, after bathing the kids, after having picked up toys (for the 3rd time that day) off the living room floor. This wasn’t the glamorous life she’d imagined. This wasn’t the radical-living she expected.

Over the past five years her and her husband have been married, they have been given opportunities to go — to move to another country and live that extraordinary life they imagined. For one reason or another, they found themselves back in the South, her husband working and her being a stay at home mom. She’s struggled, and I’ve watched her struggle through what it means to do something important. When they got married, their pastor told them, “God is not looking for His children to do radical things, He is looking for His children to be faithful.” It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Faithfulness sounds like a beautiful thing, but the reality of faithfulness is that it’s difficult when you don’t always see how your actions are impacting the world. And it's hard when a lot of people don’t notice what you do. And it's tough when every day looks the same and you pour yet another cup of coffee just to give you the energy to pick up the kid’s toys and try to be a good mom.

Acts of service and love are easy when there is an audience watching because it feeds our pride. There’s a deep desire in us to be recognized for the good we do. Being a mom is about doing acts of service and love all the time. It's about doing the hard thing, and sacrificing your own desires, because in doing so, it benefits your children, oftentimes in the most unglamorous and unrecognized ways. 

Over the last five years, a shift has occurred. Before, she believed that serving God meant anything but living a normal life. She believed that to live a meaningful life, she had to move to Cambodia and live in another culture. But as she’s held her son’s hand and snuggled her baby girl, she’s begun to realize that there is significance in what God has called her to here and now. She gets to shape those two little hearts and minds. She is the first person who will speak truth to them. She’s the one who gets to tell them what is right and wrong. She’s the one who will tell them that the sky is blue and the grass is green. She is their first teacher, confidant, friend, and example of what real love looks like. She isn’t waiting for her life to start — her life is now.

And at the end of the day, there’s a mundane to be found in everyone’s walk of life. She admits to having romanticized the missional living she so desired. What’s important, she says, isn’t deciding that being a stay at home mom is a great thing, but that it’s the right thing for her — it’s the thing she is called to do. Being faithful here with her two kids and husband might not be the radical life she once imagined, but it’s the life she’s been handed, and I don’t think she’d have it any other way.