“The word adventure has just gotten over used. For me, adventure is when everything goes wrong- that is when the adventure starts.”
Yvon Chouinard
Is there anything worth salvaging from days like this?
Could there be a bit of beauty, a shred of hope, or a hidden gift?
It certainly doesn’t look like it. From our perspective, there’s nothing here, but a hundred mistakes.
Crumpled up hearts, rotten words, and broken promises pile up to the sky, where do we begin the hunt?
Why rummage through the garbage, when we could just give up and try again tomorrow?
It’s a prophetic act to see difficult days through a different lens other than defeat or despair. In fact, it’s a practice we can’t afford to forget.
Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before we lose ourselves in the sea of self-pity or drown in depression.
I don’t think it needs to be complicated, but it does require us to stop the madness for a moment.
Perhaps every evening we could start by gathering up as much of the day as we can hold.
Sit with it in your hands, noticing the random bits and pieces, the jagged edges, the sharp corners, the dirt and dust, all the times you felt stressed, wallowed in frustration, yelled out of discouragement, or soaked in the sorrow.
Acknowledge your complicity in this deluge, abstain from pointing fingers at the disobedient toddler, negligent friend or relative, the weather, or your season of life.
Open your hands now. Let the day drift gently to the ground.
Next, move to your knees so you can have a closer look.
Watch for movement, for life. On days like today it is subtle. There are scraps of beauty jumping up, slivers of hope burning through the darkness, hidden gifts pulsing with delight.
We’re on the hunt for the tiniest speck. It’s there. Keep looking with determined eyed until you’ve found it.
When you find it, hold it up to the light. Turn it over in your hands carefully like a rare gem.
Before your drag your ragged self to bed, give the day a name based on the puny pearl you pulled from the smoking heap of debris.
Call it good or beautiful or precious. Declare it golden, graceful, or enough. But dare not dub today as insignificant, squandered, or a failure.
One hundred mistakes and all, redemption invites us to look again, to see differently, and hunt relentlessly for the Risen One.
