Comfort Zone

Have you ever done something, for the first time, and wondered how it is that you have just found it? Sometimes it seems that we were meant to do this thing but we don't come across it until it is too late.

I have a friend who is a race car guy. He has a fast car and is a very good driver. Maybe if he had found racing 20 years ago his life would be totally different; who knows, but he didn't and so it is like it is.

I guess I am just thinking about "finding" adoption right now. It isn't like adoption has not been around for thousands of years; it isn't like it's new to me, I even have some friends who are adopted, but I have not really been thinking about it until just recently.

It really can be life changing when we allow ourselves to think outside the box we are in and want to move to maybe a less comfortable box. By "less comfortable" I am not so much suggesting that our lives are ruined when we adopt, or that even our lives will be unrecognizable from what they previously were, as much as I am saying that we have a comfort zone and this is not in most of our normal comfort zones.

Maybe it is because I remember mostly the good and not the bad, but I can't remember a time when I moved out of my comfort zone and, in the end, it ended poorly. When we move out of our small painted little boxes and stretch, it seems the stretching is really beneficial and helps us grow.

Remember the first time you had to get up in front of the class and give a speech? For many people this was the most terrifying thing they had ever done, but just think what it would be like if everyone stayed in their seats. We would not "Gettysburg", we would not have "what you can do for your country", we would not have"have a dream", "fear itself" or "their finest hour". Those men stepped out of their boxes long before those speeches and the results have been ringing in our hearts and minds for decades.

My "job" is often to be an encourager to others and I am hoping that this blog and these posts will be an encouragement for you to do something that maybe you wouldn't normally do, but in doing the hard thing you would find that you are blessed.

If we didn't do the hard thing, we wouldn't have business, communities, cross-country friendships, kids-labor and delivery, raising and paying for their needs are hard- pyramids, coliseums, or anything else that takes thought and risk to do. But we have taken risks and the outcome has often been awesome.

There was a guy, a long time ago, who took a risk to build a big boat. For 120 years he built this boat and the entire time he was building it people were telling him that he was stupid. Part of the reason they were saying this was because no one had ever seen rain. Why would you need a boat if you had never seen rain? But he took a risk that God was right and I think that if we could ask Noah if the reward was worth the risk he would say something like, "Duh".

Think outside your comfort zone. Think today about how your life could be different if you moved just a little bit. What comfort can you do without, so someone else might be more comfortable? It will cost you, but I think, in the end, it will be a small cost considering the gain you get in return.