I love song lyrics. I collect them in my head. And I love good music! Music has the power to seriously affect the soul. But when you find artists who match well-crafted, thoughtful, and true lyrics with powerful music that matches the mood of the lyrics.. that’s the stuff! Ripping lyrics out of songs is kind of sad, because without the music accompanying the lyrics they aren’t nearly as powerful. But anyway, I especially love Ben Rector and I am going to rip out a few of his lyrics to quote here (one song is at the bottom.. check it out).

This little concept I’m thinking of is something that Ben seems to touch on in several of his songs. He has one line that says, “Life is not the mountaintops, but the walking in between, and I like you walking next to me” (from “I Like You”) and another that goes, “I don’t even want what I’m chasing. Because all I know is that ordinary love is what we’re made for.” Sounds kind of boring right? Walking? Ordinary love? Yep. Aren’t we supposed to make life an exciting adventure? Yep. Here’s where I’m going.. Life is both an adventure and ordinary; life is both exciting and boring. And it should be. We shouldn’t expect anything different.

I want to make my life an adventure! I want to set out to do things that make it exciting! But I almost think it can be a problem when we expect life as a whole, on a regular basis, to be exciting and stimulating. It won’t be. If that’s what I want and need out of every day of life, I don’t think I will be faithful and responsible in the “daily grind” of the ordinary, walking parts of life.

The key is looking at the everyday, ordinary, walking parts of life as an adventure. I want to look at life and individual days so that I see all as interesting; so I see glory in everyday things; so I laugh at myself; so I don’t overlook beauty. Excitement comes in such unexpected ways in real life! If life went how I imagined and planned it out, think of how boring things would be 😉 I can’t expect excitement to come as I imagine it, but it will come – you can be sure of that! But if I count on excitement as I have it conceived in my mind, then I’ll be searching and searching for it, neglecting what is before me to do (the walking and the ordinary) and honestly probably never finding that conceived idea of excitement.

Kind of like Ben’s little lyrics suggest.. yeah life’s mountains are heck awesome! But then there’s the responsible walking in between the mountains, which actually can be quite surprising and wonderful (and he’s suggesting that it’s awesome when you’re walking with someone you love). There’s the “ordinary love” that we are made for, but we keep chasing things we don’t even want? What’s that about? It’s like I’ve got these misconceptions in my mind of what life should be like based on stories and mountain-top experiences and movies and what people say and dumb little quotes and such.. what college life should have been like, what romance will be like, what true happiness feels like, etc. And they really aren’t true. Yes, some of the mountain-top experiences will be like that and that’s great! And then you come down from the mountain, start walking, and mountains don’t happen every day. And that’s okay.

So yeah, I’m chasing life and chasing adventure. But it’s not always adventure like we’ve been told to expect or told to hope for. It’s a different kind of adventure but no less exciting!

YES! LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE! And I don’t want to settle for less. Heck, life really is an adventure. What I am doing right now is NOTHING like what the Rebecca a year ago expected. And a year from now? I will be somewhere. And I have no idea where 🙂 Now that’s exciting! It’ll be fun. And in the mean time, daily life.

To quote the movie UP: ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!