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The Sandbox Writing Challenge 2018 — Exercise 14

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risksWhat risks have you taken in your life?

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I’m guessing that the last time I did this challenge I probably said I wasn’t a risk taker. And that would be true. I have played it safe, played by the book all my life in hopes that the old adage that nice guys don’t finish last is actually true. Just this morning I called our health insurance company to let them know the lab at the doc’s office did the wrong blood work for me last week. The office called this morning to tell me, and I was curious as to if they went ahead and billed the insurance company — they did. The guy who helped me was somewhat flabbergasted when I said I called because I didn’t think it was fair to the insurance company. Well heck! I guess not a lot of people would give a hoot!

Be that as it may, every day we all make choices that involve risks in one way or another. Tiny micro decisions that we have to at least momentarily consider the consequences of. My guess is, however, that we don’t particularly experience those times as risks.

For most of us when we think of risks we likely think of something really outside our comfort zone. Sure, there are big things in our lives that we perceive as risks. New jobs. New cars. New houses. New relationships. New KIDS! But still these decisions are all encountered in the course of our every day lives.

So if I don’t really see those things as risks, what would risk look like for me? I think the biggest risk anyone can take is to let their guard down and love someone. Doing that puts us in our most vulnerable states in so many ways. And that love can look like many different things. From my experience a good example of this is when we adopted our daughter, Stef, from India. That’s the hugest risk I’ve ever taken.

I could probably write a book on the number of risks we hurdled as we went through that whole adoption process. And then to have a child come into our life and not know how we would respond to him or her, well that was the biggest risk of all. Would we love her the same as we did our biological son? (We do. In fact, we keep forgetting which one is the adopted one! 😉 ) There were hundreds of little decisions that needed to be made along the way. `

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I was going to say that adoption was the only real risk I’ve ever taken. But in thinking through this prompt I’ve realized that risk may not be the right word to describe our adoption experience.  I guess what we were actually doing was stepping out in faith. Maybe I don’t understand the difference. And maybe that’s why I’ve never been a risk-taker. Maybe I’m a faith-walker. Martin Luther King said:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

And we couldn’t even see the tread on the stairs!

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Do YOU think there’s a difference between taking a risk and stepping out in faith?

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Picture Source:
Mouse — SlideShare
Faith Words — Healing Waters Flow