Authors dream about adventures. Then they write them. And readers enter them.
My goal as an author is not just to convey that thirst and pursuit for “something great”, but to urge and inspire my readers (and myself) to live them. I want my writing and my life to be an adventure story from start to finish.
My upcoming book, A Time to Die, came from the idea of living an active life–a life where we step in faith after a daring idea and watch God work. One year ago, this month (August), I laid awake in bed at 2am after watching the summer Olympics with my husband. My mind rotated in a sleepy stupor like a movie reel, thinking about how God’s equipped each of us for great things. After a string of sleepless nights and very out-of-the-ordinary prayers, my husband and I chose to take a daring step into the unknown:
I was going to snowboard race…in faith.
Yes, you heard me right: A bookworm on a snowboard who currently lived in flat snowless Missouri with a degree in speech therapy. Interesting mix. But I trusted God would take me all the way to the Olympics if He wanted. And that’s what I prayed for.
It may sound crazy, me being an author going on such an adventure, but I refuse to live vicariously through writing.
I never dreamed of being an Olympian before this pursuit. I’d never raced before. I wasn’t even that consistently active, but I had grown up in the Rocky Mountains so I had a little snowboarding history. Still, this pursuit of adventure came from a completely different desire of my heart. My husband and I truly had no idea what we were getting into, but we didn’t need to know. We just needed to know why we were doing it.
I didn’t make it to the Olympics, but God took me all the way to the US National Championships where I placed 13th. Now my husband and I have this story forever—the story of pursuing a crazy dream as far as we could. No one can ever take it from us and we can share it with our children. That may sound a little sappy, but we have no idea the number of ripples this adventure started or what it might inspire. We’ve gotten a taste of what God can do with a daring step forward. We get to share it, and it’s good, dear friends. So good.
So let me ask you, what’s the most daring adventure you’ve stepped into? It can be anything! Do you have one you’ve dreamed of?
(To read the details behind my initial decision to snowboard race, click here!)
