Good-bye year of adventure, hello year of service...

My sweet husband, sometime in January of last year, dubbed 2010 our "Year of Adventure".  We had never had a "theme" for a year in our previous 30 years of marriage, but he was moved by what he observed as a tendency to repetition and complacency, and wanted us to challenge ourselves to be more adventurous: more adventurous in our spiritual lives, our relational lives, and even in our entertainment and reading lives.  So, we embraced a year of thinking about taking what looked to us to be adventurous paths, the road less travelled, the decision that looked less comfortable and more, well, exciting. It was frightening at times! And how did that work out for us? It was a tremendous year!

Some of the "adventures" that came our way included new jobs for both of us: one keeping the world safe for democracy, the other in the world of online teaching. We traveled to places we had never been (like hiking to the top of Pajarito Mountain, buying a car on e-bay and driving it home from California across the Sonoran desert, and geocaching in all sorts of places).  We entered the new world of Grandparenthood.  We also found ourselves identifying the places where we stop ourselves from doing things because we are creatures of habit.  This was a very valuable part of our year! So it was a wonderful year, with little adventures popping up everywhere we turned.

After much prayer and thought, my dh has made another declaration for this year: a year of service.  Our job is to ask, "How would God have me serve this person, or in this circumstance, or through this trial? How can I set my own desires aside and serve God or someone else?"  And already, the options for service are popping out of the woodwork.  This topic is also a little frightening.  The truth is, I love living in the Cosmos of Chris, where everything in the universe revolves around me.  But already, I am seeing how this goal for the year will change my perspective in healthy ways.  I am tutoring some students to serve their families, and it is really exciting to watch these folks learn and change, and to have the privilege of taking part in that process. 

I think this will be another adventurous year, Gentle Reader.  And I hope you will join us.