{My younger sister went to Thailand to work at an orphanage this summer. You can read about her adventures here. She apparently found a t-shirt salesman who made t-shirts in English. Some of them are hilarious; some make no sense at all. She brought me 4 amazing little gems and I will blog about each of them in this series.}

This t-shirt features a bored old lady. If you look at her face, it appears that she could not think of something more boring (stultifying?)than gracing the front of my clothing. I, personally, think that being an article of my clothing would be fascinating. You would get to experience all sorts of fascinating things- like being dried when your label explicitly says not to, or meeting a giant dollop of hummus at the beginning of a work day, or being worn inside out for half a day, or being paired with a pair of fabulously hideous pants.  My clothes experience alot of love.

If only I had eyelashes like that....

I read somewhere that sometimes moms say, “Only boring people are bored.” Now, not only would this have annoyed the heck out of me if it was said to me, say, anywhere between fourth grade and now, but I also don’t think it’s true. There are some things that are certainly boring. While I certainly don’t think that I am a boring person,  I would argue the following are boring:

– Most staff meetings

– Waiting in line at the DMV

– Listening to NPR , excluding Diane Rehm because her voice is so fun to listen to and A Way With Words because those people are just crazy about phoenomes.

– Watching any sport on TV, especially golf, excluding roller derby. Roller derby is exciting anywhere you watch it.

– Driving through West Texas, excluding sightings of tornados and/or tumbleweeds

– National Geographic Magazines, especially when pulled from a pile of thousands

– Teaching yourself calculus (okay, not boring. I actually bought a Cal textbook from Half Price Books and worked through the first half of the book on my own…for fun)

In this post, I have a thesis. See, I’m in grad school now and I can’t write like a plebe anymore. I have to have a point, state it clearly, and back it up with cited examples. This effort also includes using words that you will have look up in a dictionary (thus, the word plebe). These requirements will last approximately one post. Then, I will go back to telling funny things that happened to me, most likely with incorrect grammar and slangy words that I borrow from this dictionary.

My thesis is: Christ Followers are not boring.

Why do I feel the need to refute this? Perhaps I should amend my statement to say, “Christ Followers should not be boring.”

I think alot of times, people who profess to be Christians get pegged as Kumbayah-singing, hair-braiding, rule-following, fuddie-duddies. Well, I certainly enjoy a good round of Kumbayah and I guess my early bedtime could nail me as a fuddie-duddie, but I’m not much for following rules (without cause) and puh-leaz tell me if you know someone who will braid my hair. I just don’t get enough of that. In fact, I’m calling an emergency hair-braiding Bible study meeting at my house tomorrow morning. Be there or have bedhead.

More accurately, Christians are pegged as isolationists who have no working knowlege of things that anyone else enjoys. Many believers only spend their free time with other believers and they don’t do anything “worldly” so they’re like “America’s Got What?” and “Of course, I know Lady Bra Bra.” These things could certainly lead people to believe that believers don’t do anything fun.  That’s why my (amended) thesis is what it is.

Thesis Support: Wherein I Remind You of Examples of Lives Full of Adventure

Here’s what I like about God. He uses normal people. With the exception of Jesus, every other person mentioned in a book with thousands of characters is flawed. Every last one of them. You don’t have to be super-human or super-righteous to be called by God to do some miraculous things.

Remember Moses? Moses was just a kid who witnessed a murder and then ran away to hide. When God told Moses that he needed to go free His people, Moses said, “But I stutter!” God said, “I don’t care. You’re doing it” and then Moses went. Through Moses, God inflicted crazy plagues of locusts and frogs. Moses led the Israelites to freedom by walking along the floor of the Red Sea and then led them around in the desert for 40 years while they sought the Promised Land.

Remember Joseph (and the Technicolor Dream Coat)? He was the youngest of a million kids. His brothers hated him so much that they dropped him in a hole and then sold him to human traffickers. He then became the slave of a crazy woman who threw herself at him, and when he spurned her advances, accused him of raping her. While Joseph was sitting in jail, the King heard of his ability to interpret dreams and Joseph became a beloved advisor, which resulted in him moving up the ladder of success until he was in charge of the food supply during the famine and he had to face his brothers again when they came asking for food. That’s alot of excitement for a little farmer squirt.

Remember John the Baptist? He was Jesus’ cuz. He was the person who was telling everyone about Jesus, before Jesus was Jesus. John lived in the wilderness and didn’t cut his hair, wore camel hair, and ate bugs and honey. Most men I know would prefer to live this way, if they could. On his resume, John put I baptized Jesus, which really helps you stand out from the crowd.

Wherein I Describe How My Life Thus Far Has Been An Adventure

Remember me? I’m just an ordinary person with an average amount of courage. God has given me the opportunity to do some extraordinary things for Him. My first job out of college was teaching English to 35 adults, despite never having set foot in an ESL class. Oh, and I didn’t have any set curriculum, so I had to create my own. It was alot of responsibility and alot of fun.

When I worked for Girl Scouts (another organization where you would assume hair-braiding and kumbayah would occur, although there was mostly just back-stabbing and drama), my coworker and I were at a school where we were responsible for teaching eighty junior high girls at a time. On our dancing day, we were having a hard time getting participation and out of frustration, I yelled, “If you don’t start dancing, no one gets cookies next week.” Those 11 little words incited a miraculous, spontaneous “Soulja Boi” flash mob and…everyone did get cookies.  PS- If you ever need to learn Soulja Boi, I am an expert at teaching it.

We’ve had the pleasure of befriending people from all over the world and we’ve just signed up to host a small group for International students from UTD so we’ll get to know even more.  We have an AWESOME community of people that we had the pleasure of living with for three years and now they’re life long friends. We’ve been a part of small groups and Bible studies and home churches that have connected us with believers from all walks of life.

I guess this all depends on your definition of adventure. Alex and I are followers of Jesus who rockclimb, bike, play with our dog, have game nights galore, host people in our home, play bocce ball, go fishing, have dance parties, play tennis, read books, volunteer our time, and all without the risk of hangovers and an ugly case of “Why did I do that?” Yes, we want to go overseas eventually, but God has put us in Dallas to teach us things we need to know and I am SO glad that He made us wait. The time here has been so sweet.

Conclusion: Life with God is an adventure. If you think being a Christian is boring, then go read the Bible! It’s choc-full of people who did things for God that they never thought possible. God created you, so He knows what your heart of hearts really loves and He will use you to do things that you never thought you could do. Just recently, as Alex and I were praying about adopting an older Thai child, God reminded me that life with Him is an adventure.  You never know what He could ask you to do- the places you  might go, the people you might meet. In my heart of hearts, I really desire adventure and I’m thankful that He knows that and loves me enough to offer it.

To life!