My Life as Annie’s weekly Time Travel Tuesday question for today is:

Tell us the most adventurous thing you have ever done! What gave you the courage to do it or try it and how did you feel afterwards?

I’ve been thinking about this off and on all day. I am not a very adventurous soul. I like my well-defined comfort zones. I don’t know that I have ever really done anything adventurous on purpose just for the adventure. But the Lord has pushed me out of my comfort zone at times.

Probably one “push” was going to college when none of my immediate family had ever gone and when I didn’t really have the money to. I wrote more about that here (fourth paragraph).

Another time was when I, who usually was very quiet and reserved, especially where guys were concerned, took the initiative to introduce myself to my husband-to-be.

But probably one of the most adventurous areas of my life has been in the realm of serving the Lord. My preference is to operate behind the scenes. But when one of my first adult opportunities for a small leadership position came up in our ladies’ ministry, and my first instinct was to decline, our ladies’ ministry president encouraged those of us who were nominees not to say no until we had prayed about it. And as I did, I just didn’t feel the freedom to say no. Though in a sense I felt “hemmed in” — not by the people asking me to serve, but by the Lord — when no one else accepted the nomination and I was ‘it,” that experience stretched me and grew my faith and dependence on the Lord in amazing ways. In the years since with other leadership positions, it has been scary yet marvelous to be in a position that seems too big, that it seems any number of other people would be better gifted for, and learn and grow and even make mistakes and find the Lord faithful to provide wisdom, grace, ideas, supplies, time, helpers, and everything else as I give it all over to Him (sometimes several times) and depend on Him to work in and through me and the ministry at hand. And then when He uses it, all the glory goes to Him because I know it wasn’t any strength or wisdom or skill of my own involved. I wrote more about this in a post titled “You can’t say no until you pray about it.” Often these days we hear the other side of it, that it is fine to say no and, in fact, we need to so we’re not overrun and burdened down with responsibilities we were never meant to take on. And that’s very true. There have been many things I have felt perfectly free to say no to over the years. Yet for far too long and for all the wrong reasons, “No” was usually my initial response to a new opportunity of ministry. So I encourage you, the next time someone asks you to consider participating in a ministry, pray about it before saying no right off the bat. The answer may indeed be no — it may not be the right time or you may already have too many responsibilities. But if the answer is yes, the Lord may be about to take you on an adventure you would never otherwise have known.

Then, though I studiously avoid roller coasters, one of the biggest roller coaster rides of my life has been dealing with transverse myelitis.  Posts dealing with that are in the upper right hand corner under “Pages,” so I won’t reiterate much of that here. But learning to walk again and to drive with numb feet and to operate with a quirky nervous system has been quite an adventure! It has been a path I would not have chosen to go down, but, again, sometimes the Lord just puts you in positions where there is nothing you can do but depend on Him, and you either have to go forward or vegetate. I am so thankful for the lessons learned and for the experience of leaning on Him and finding “the everlasting arms” underneath, of wrestling with the hard questions and finding Him faithful, true, good, and loving.