Quiet and Steady

I've been thinking a bit about the concept of "living outside the comfort zone."  It's something many people aspire to, or at least tout as a mantra to live by.  It's the end of May, so all those famous commencement speakers' speeches have already been uploaded to youtube (I highly recommend that you watch J.K. Rowling's address to Harvard)

In the church, it's an idea that's constantly growing.  Faith isn't safe.  We don't stay in our shell.  And I really think that it's true, that it matters that we do not become complacent.  It's easy, in the land of riches and dreams, to become too comfortable with our iphones and computers and clothes and abundance of food and houses.  Too easy to forget that we are to be in the world, but not of the world.  Too easy to forget that it isn't about us, but about His glory.  Too easy to live for comfort, for luxury, for a not-worthy cause.

But I have also felt a certain pressure that comes with the idea of "stepping out of your comfort zone."  Often, this is accompanied by encouragements to do something "crazy," like travel the world, quit your job and try something totally unprecedented, do away with the traditional and steady and instead invest in something others would raise their eyebrows at.  While I agree that travel, taking risks, not spending time on something you hate, and not bowing to people's expectations, are very good, it becomes hard to see then how one can continue to live outside the comfort zone in a more quiet and steady manner.

I'm about to embark on a six-month journey to places I have never been, to do something that is taking away my money and job security (more to come in a later post), to be on my great "adventure."  I've never done this, so I'm full of excitement, expectation, anticipation, and a healthy dose of fear.  But I also sincerely hope that after I come back and find a job and start to work on my social work license, that the great adventure doesn't stop.  In fact, I have felt very restless and in antsy anticipation the past three years because I felt being here in my 626 hometown has been altogether too comfortable, and that my life hadn't really "begun."

Why do I think that?  If anything, I've learned in the past three months or so that anything can be an adventure, anything can be a chance of growth and learning.  Like going on long hikes to who-knows-where.  Like going on a 5-K color run.  Like declaring my faith to a classroom full of people who disagree fundamentally what my religion believes in.

Sometimes it IS making that huge leap.  Papa and Mama left their lucrative careers in the motherland--banking and nursing--to come and take up more schooling so that they could minister to people.  BUT they've also made the quiet life--buying a home, raising their two children, having steady jobs-- an exciting one.  Midnight visits to hospitals, impromptu and chance meetings in cabs and airplanes that lead to faith conversions, seeing children grow up and graduate and take on the world.  Car rides up and down the Pacific Coast Highway and the 19089th trip to Disneyland was as much fun as going to Malawi or Thailand.  Both are awesome.  The crazy and the quiet are both challenging and adventurous.  Both take courage and remembering to play it "unsafe."

I don't want to live the rest of my life, after I come back from traveling, feeling like I've finished the adventure.  When really, as C.S. Lewis says, all of this life is really just the prologue, and I'm not even close to Chapter One of the greatest story "which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before."