A Christmas Adventure

                In case you haven’t been caught up, I’m currently living in Japan. That means I get to study another language, enjoy amazing food, and explore a culture very different from my own. It also means I am spending my first Christmas away from home and family. I’m living the dream out here, having all sorts of adventures. But a lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels – well, like one thing after another.

Swords and Horses

                Last weekend, I finally finished watching Avatar: the Last Airbender, and this weekend I’m browsing through Legend of Korra. Both TV series take place in the same fantasy universe, but the former takes place in a pre-industrial age, while the latter has cars and assembly lines and radios. I have to say, I’m not very happy about it. I like my fantasy adventures with swords and horses, thank you very much – no tasers or airplanes allowed.

                That said, I know (as I’ve said before) that horses and swords aren’t really what make an adventure. If I buy a katana in Japan and then head back to Texas and ride a horse with one, that’s not going to make me a hero. Adventure isn’t about how you’re dressed or what weapons you’re using. It’s about knowing you’re part of a greater purpose, a larger story, something worth fighting and dying for. It’s about knowing that what you’re doing matters, that there is a meaning behind history, and that meaning, whether you call it providence or destiny or fate, is drawing you into itself.

Too Good to be True?

                I used to think that adventures just couldn’t exist in the real world. After all, history is hardly black-and-white. Everything has drawbacks; everything has different perspectives. Every hero is only a person, and all people have flaws and mistakes. I used to fear that because the world was so complicated and chaotic, and we as people were so weak, we couldn’t have lives with deeper meaning.

But (fortunately) I was wrong. Adventures do exist; heroism and bravery and a greater meaning and good and evil do exist. But they don’t come with a label. Just as a diamond looks just like a dirty bit of glass before its cut, but is no less valuable for that, adventures are no less real because they’re rough around the edges in real life. We just have to learn to recognize their true value. In the end, it’s up to us whether we call it an adventure, a rough ride, or just a huge pain.

A Rough Ride

Take the first Christmas. In hindsight, it was the setting of the Incarnation, God become man, a centerpiece of the greatest story ever told. But at the time it looked like Mary, nine months pregnant and probably pretty cranky, being jostled around on a donkey all the way to Bethlehem only to find there were no available rooms. In the pictures she always looks serenely happy, but I bet she was hot and sweaty and her back was killing her; it couldn’t have been a fun few days.

Mary and Joseph, I remember now, also spent Christmas alone, away from family, and not particularly comfortable.* But that’s what adventures are. They aren’t easy. You don’t know what’s going to happen; you only know that whatever it is, it’s worth it. And you know that, like every good story, in the end it will come out right. One day, the dirt will come off and the diamond’s true beauty will shine out.

If you’re having a hard or lonely Christmas this year, hang in there with me. We can see this adventure through – and we’ll come out stronger for it.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

*Not to mention the fact they had to flee the country when the king tried to have their son killed.

“Nativity scene – adoration of the shepherds” by Eusebius@Commons is licensed under CC BY 2.0