Summer Adventure 5-Day Reading Planنموونە

My greatest regrets don’t come from failure. They come from dreaming about the epic and settling for the trivial. For years I dreamt about an epic summer adventure with my family. An open road. My wife in the passenger seat of our VW van, bare feet on the dash, wind blowing brown hair over amber sunglasses. My boys playing a road game in the back that inevitably ends with punching. Our dog in her usual place between us. I don’t know where we’re going. It doesn’t matter. It’s the life we’ve been given. It’s music and wind and wild prairie grass. 

Summers went by. The music faded. I traded the dream for a pay raise.  I drove a fancy car on crowded freeways and bought lots of stuff and my boys fought about who had to pick it up off the floor. There is freedom and there is bondage and there is not much between. The antidote to a life limited to the size of a handheld device is to point ourselves to something bigger. 

“The mountains were as big as I remembered, and the only change was in the longings. I longed for life to be big again. For my boys to experience a father who climbed mountains and forded rivers and faced the wild in front of him. I feared my life was shrinking. We now have the whole world in our own hands, and we can access it at our leisure. We are shaped by what we commit ourselves to. We can look up and be shaped by mountains and sunsets. Or we can look down and be shaped by devices and yet another selfie. I longed for my boys to be shaped by all the wild that remains. I stood at the edge of the wilderness and looked up.” 

The difference between the epic life and the trivial is a small commitment. Not to scale a mountain, but to circle some dates on a calendar and hold them sacred. You have very few summers with your children. Chances are, a lot of them are already gone. Go circle a week or a long weekend. Fight every obstacle that comes to attack those dates. Fight as if it were for the souls of your children. For when you go on this adventure, your children will experience the Almighty. Remember, always, this is what you are fighting for.

Adventure Action Steps

• Secure dates to go camping (or on another adventure). Mark them on your calendar.
• If you’re taking children, make sure they have the dates available too. Check with their mom, school, etc.