Answering the Call of Adventure

Photo by Pixabay

There’s a parallel world bidding me, enticing me to step through its portal. Often, the invitation comes first thing in the morning on awakening. Unless I accept that invitation on getting out of bed, I will soon be engulfed by domestic concerns and priorities.  I struggle to let go of the logical, rational part of me that needs to put some order into my surroundings. 

I wonder if I’m inhabiting my left-brained world too much? I would like to spend more time in the other place that has been whispering to me my whole life.  A true, deep part of me knew my predilection for writing from the age of eleven, but my logical brain, always in the ascendant, decided upon a career in accountancy. Double-entry bookkeeping is a beautiful system which applies logic and order to record complex financial matters. A friend of mine is a writer who also loves numbers. She compared her memory of algebra on a Friday afternoon to the feeling of sinking into a warm bath, the logic of the equations with their predictable and set answers washing over her. She writes: 

The logical, the reasoned, the lucid, the coherent, has always lulled me.

Answering the call of numbers in my younger years was a highly practical step. I would likely never be out of work, and that proved to be the case. I enjoyed the world of mathematics and logic, but now I would like to tame them a bit, give them less priority in my life and nurture that right-sided brain a bit more. 

Every so often, we have to give up one thing we love to make space for another.  I’m excited and energised at the idea of easing up a bit on orderly, reliable me who can always be counted on to run payroll, pay bills and produce monthly financial reports. I’ve been squeezing writing into the margins of my days and weeks up until now, but I would like to give it more of a chance. 

I’ve got a watercolour painting of a sailing ship and a model of the Cutty Sark in my front hallway. I love them partly because they remind me of ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’, possibly my favourite of the Narnia series. The children in the story step out of their humdrum, ordinary lives into a world of fantasy and adventure, where talking mice wield swords and behave like gentlemen.  This is the land of the right-brained, the place where anything could happen. 

Jesus invites us to ‘walk on the water’, to let go of rationality and trust Him. How many of us are actually doing that? I know I’m not! But how liberating to think that He doesn’t expect me to be sensible and stay in the boat. I am free to reach out, take His hand, and get drawn into the adventure of my life.