An Inbred Sense of Adventure

Have you ever thought about how the way your parents raised you has had a lasting effect on how you experience and look at the world? The more I talk with people about their relationships with their parents and where they grew up I am realizing more and more how much an effect that has on our desires and passions. I have talked with people who have over-bearing parents, supportive parents, passive parents, and absent parents. I have also been able to talk to people from the West, the Mid-West, the East coast, from Europe, and from Asia. All of these experiences have lead me to think about my own experience and how that is shaping how I am feeling right now as I begin to move into a new chapter of my life.

Both of my parents were born and raised in the west, mainly Colorado, and that kind of mindset had a great effect on them. Both of my parents were very adventurous and were willing to go all over the country and try different things. It seems that that small bit of wanderlust that they experienced in their lives seemed to rub off on both my sister and me. My parents brought us up to be adventurous, to follow our hearts, to try different things, and to seek God wherever He may lead. My sister did just that by moving to Minnesota, pursuing herbal medicine after a getting a degree in church music, and pursuing a life on her own rather than going straight into marriage. The same was true of me as I went to ODU to pursue a career in naval aviation, then quit to pursue other things, including working in places away from home for my summers in college. It seems through all of the things that I have experienced that inbred sense of adventure of romantic pursuit of God through intuition.

So this is my background as I come into my soon-to-be post-college life. My western upbringing continues to drive me on to new and different frontiers. But the hard part is that I am conflicted about what frontier to explore. I find myself applying to a job with Intervarsity and also equipped to serve in the wilderness as an outdoor educator. While I am still excited about interviewing with a job with IV, an organization that has dramatically changed the way that I look at God, I still continue to have the nagging feeling of going out into the great expanses of the wilderness and teaching others to respect and experience the wonders of God's creation that has profoundly changed my life. As my job interview with Intervarsity draws nearer, I find myself being more conflicted about what path I want to take, and what the timing of taking that path should be. I know this is part of growing up, but I am still feeling the pangs of exploration and the unknown, the same pangs that drew gold-miners to the Klondike, what drew Cook and Amundsen to the frozen south, and what drew Muir to the Sierras in the uncharted mountains of California. What an effect our experiences have on our own passions, wishes, and directions!