26

Today is my birthday! I've now completed a quarter century of my life and, as my dad enjoyed pointing out, am closer now to 50 than I am to the start of my life [thanks, dad]. This year promises lots of familiarity--familiar job, familiar roommate, familiar church... Yet I also sense - and a big part of me really hopes it to be true - that I'm on the brink of something new. New people. New places. New experiences. New adventures.

And that excites me. As much as I love the familiar, and as much as it keeps getting better with every year, I don't want to be stuck where I'm at, doing the "same old, same old" no matter what. I want to be stretched. I want to be challenged. I want to grow. I want to face those "tiny dangers" in my life that really are nothing to be afraid of, but still somehow hold me back.

So here I am. You may laugh at some of the things I consider "dangers," like my avoidance of malls and terror of haircuts. Others you may be able to relate to, like how I hate confrontation and am kind of shy by nature. But my goal is to not just sit back and live in the familiar and comfortable, but to face these tiny dangers. To challenge myself to step out of my comfort zones and learn to walk in trust and obedience and faith. Though you laugh, I will chronicle dangers faced anyway, hoping that as I don't shy from the little things, I will also be training myself to not shrink from the big things when they come my way. And when I can't always be fearless, I pray I will at least be found faithful.

TODAY...

It's my birthday, and the scariest things I confronted today were countless little siblings swarming my backside like sharks to blood, each set and determined to give me 26 full-force birthday spankings. That may not seem too bad, but I'm the oldest of 9 and trust me, I was helpless and it was terrifying. I may not sit comfortably for a week.