Welcome to the Art of Adventure! I am Charissa, the creator and writer behind all you see here. I hold deeply to the belief that our every day life is laden with adventure and opportunities to practice the rhythms of savoring God’s beauty, exploring the unknown, and taking the risk of love.
Here at Art of Adventure you will be inspired (and challenged!) to let go of a safe and sterile faith and learn to travel with a wild God, responding with childlike excitement to His profound invitation to us… “Follow me.”
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I have my undergrad degree from Northwest University, a Master’s in Human Services Counseling, and am a certified Life Breakthrough Coach. I am a reluctant traveler, thriving on routines, schedules, and some sense of feeling in control. As you can imagine I have a hard time letting go, welcoming change, and walking through my fears. However, (and thankfully!) over the course of my life, God has ever so gently nudged me from the nest of my comfort zone and revealed to me the real danger lies in trying to lead a perfectly safe life- cooped up and complacent.
Now, my heart is hooked on seeing ALL of life as beautiful adventure with a wild God, learning to travel with Him wherever He leads.
While living in Vienna, Austria for four years after university (something I never saw coming!) I met my South African sweetheart (also a surprise!). In 2009, in my parents backyard, we made a sacred and celebratory promise to never leave each other. A month after our marriage we were on a plane back to his beloved country to start our life together. We spent the next four years in Johannesburg and Cape Town, both places of the world I had never seen. You can imagine the shock I experienced from a new country, culture, marriage, and friends. Needless to say, I was a bit of an ugly mess our first year of marriage!
In our first 8 years together, we moved six times and birthed three babies into the world (each on different continents).
In 2016, after living two years in the Netherlands, we sold all our belongings once again, a garage full of bikes (thank you Dutch culture!), and said sad farewells to cherished friends, we travelled with curious hearts to the Pacific Northwest ready to be amazed and awed by His goodness and provision.
Through all the international explorations and changing scenery, I’ve discovered a deeper hunger on the inside- my soul was made to move with God no matter the season. He is constantly wooing me to respond to His extravagant love, settling under the starry sky of glorious grace, and moving to rhythms of His Spirit beating beneath the surface of my ordinary days.
This kind of life is hardly cozy and comfortable, it feels dangerous and playful all at once. In the words of author Shauna Niequist it urges us to write our plans in pencil and “keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled my remote control.”
I’ve become slightly obsessed with encouraging us as women to live openly to these crazy God invitations and be expectant for His redeeming surprises around every corner.
I’ve seen firsthand how much life comes from giving ourselves permission to practice the art of adventure-seeing the wilderness as an invitation, swinging wide the door to impossibility and childlike faith, and greeting the unexpected with delight.
The ideas, words, and products you will find here at Art of Adventure shop and blog were created to inspire us to come alive to our own adventure with Jesus, letting His love lead us down mysterious paths into unknown territory where we encounter spaces of His heart and our own soul that we’ve never seen before!
So…what do you say, will you join Him?
I hope you do!
Traveling with you,
Charissa
In between homeschooling my three children (soon to be four in July 2018) and falling in love with my husband, you can find me sneaking out the door for an early morning run, sharing life with friends, planning weekend expeditions for my family, corralling my three wide-eyed children out the door to enjoy God’s beautiful creation through gardening, hiking, or walking around the neighborhood, messing around with a paintbrush, or dreaming and scheming up new ideas and projects!
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller
