Adventure
The difference between adventure back then and adventure now is staggering.
Let me give you an example: In college, maybe you took a backpacking trip to a foreign country. Maybe you stayed in a hostile and tried some questionable substances and spent the night dancing with sweaty strangers.
The current you--a wild Friday night is Netflix and chill until 10:45. And if we are being honest it’s more like 9:30.
After my first daughter was born, I spent a brief period of mourning the loss of adventure as I previously knew it. I was unable to get excited about making my own baby food and solo trips to Target. Back then, I associated adventurousness with freedom and I couldn’t see how parenthood allowed for either.
Over the years, I’ve reached an important conclusion: I no longer associate defining “adventure” with unrealistic expectations and my current season of life. That is a recipe for disappointment. Instead, I get to witness my children on their daily explorations; the first time they take a step, make a friend, belly laugh. And we get to marvel at what they are capable of in their own life’s adventure.
And as for us, we are not sitting idly by and letting life happen to us, we are here on this journey together, and we are out there experiencing the world again, only this time through the eyes of our kiddos.
I would argue that we are actually in the midst of life’s greatest adventure; motherhood.