I don’t have many real adventures in my life. I don’t have many things that I do that are very adventurous or exciting. Yeah, every now and then we go on a hike, we go on a long run, or we go on a camping trip that pushes us out of the normal everyday.
But most of the hours of my days are caught up doing the menial things of life that seem downright boring at times. Maybe they are. And maybe that means my life is nothing more than just a collection of everyday ordinary tasks that ultimately don’t mean anything.
But maybe, there is more to the everyday than what appears on the surface. Maybe, I’m just not looking deep enough into the everyday to see what adventure can be had.
I have to be honest with you, the normal-everyday-boring around the house of #theFloridaWestfalls isn’t so tame. If you know us, you know we have three boys (17, 15, 11) and two German Shorthaired Pointers. A normal day around my house is like Lord of the Flies. I mean, for real. It is practically chaos from start to finish. And to be honest, I kinda like it. There is something beautiful in the way my boys, and my dogs, live their lives with reckless abandon. They pour all of themselves into everything they do… even if what they are doing is fighting each other. And maybe not everything, because we still fight with them about homework. But, you get the idea.
Over the last several years, I have really come to realize that having three boys around the house is an adventure all to its own. Really, Ronda (my wife) and I have our separate adventures with the boys, because as a father and mother we approach this parent-to-boys-thing a little differently. Which is good and how it should be. But being a boy-dad is an adventure. I have three men-to-be that God has trusted me with and if they grow up to be turds who don’t treat other people with respect and dignity, I bear some of the responsibility for that. It is the most daunting adventure I have ever been on.
And the one I feel the most woefully unprepared for.
I mean, I know how messed up I am and how that doesn’t really translate to leading these men-to-be the best. I know my bad habits and idiosyncrasies that are detrimental. I intimately know all the mistakes I made and how I have made bad choices that led me down paths I didn’t want to go.
But in reality, none of that matters. It really doesn’t. Because, here I am a dad to three boys and two dogs. Whether I am prepared or ready or think I have it together enough to be a dad is totally irrelevant at this stage of the game. That ship has sailed. What am I to do? I press into this mess that is me being a dad. I own my mistakes (there are tons of them) and I ask for forgiveness from my boys, and Ronda, when I wrong them. I own my bad behavior and remind the boys I make mistakes and that my behaviors was wrong and not the way I should be acting. I point them towards God and try to lead them into his ways. I accept God has given these boys, and Ronda, to shepherd and trust he knew what he was doing. I don’t always get it right… but I always try. I make mistakes, but I own them. I try to use every moment as a teaching moment to guide my boys in the way they should go.
It appears the most important, spectacular, and amazing adventure I will ever go in my life is one I didn’t even realize I was on… until I had walked a significant way on the journey.
If you seek to find adventure in your everyday, then the excitingly boring life isn’t so bad.
Eli Westfall 