The Adventures of Bipolar Girl: Episode I

All great adventures must start somewhere.

It’s only in the telling and the re-telling that details get changed or left out… but the adventure itself is always great. The moments in time that it unfolded in can only be relived if someone takes the time to carefully unpack the baggage, remove the tissue paper, and shake out each memory, carefully, and look at it intently, until such a time as it must be refolded and carefully packed away again. Each person who unpacks a memory takes a little piece of it away with them and adds it to their own storage of memories, so that no two people can ever unpack the same thing… and therein lies the beauty of the adventure. For each person an adventure is many things and anything… and with each telling and re-telling we grow.

The other neat thing about an actual adventure is the sheer spontaneity of it all. You can’t really plan an adventure. It just happens as it wills and the only true enjoyment comes from the acceptance of the fact that YOU CAN’T CONTROL AN ADVENTURE. It controls you.

Adventures are like that. So it’s no surprise that my adventure with Jesus often consisted of the completely unexpected. Ok… always. My adventure with Jesus always consisted of the completely unexpected. Just when I thought that I had the plot all figured out—Jesus would introduce a scene change that he hadn’t mentioned to me. I guess you can say that Jesus is like that. He likes to surprise me. That’s why I decided to pack my memories on paper and call it, “My Adventures with Jesus.”  This was one adventure that I wanted to pack carefully, so I wouldn’t forget anything. I also came up with what sounded like a really good one liner for the end of the story: the title is wrong.

It’s not about my adventures with Jesus. The focus of that title is all wrong. I’m not the focus. Jesus is. Jesus was creating the adventure around me and I was just along for the ride…. and what a ride it’s been… what a ride it is… what a ride it’s going to be!

Jesus himself is the adventure. He has to be the absolute most coolest guy I’ve ever met and I haven’t had a dull moment since I met him. The day I opened the door of my life to him was the day he came into my life and promised me a freedom unlike anything I could ever imagine. To this day, I’m still having a truly hard time grasping just how incredible the freedom he gives me actually is. But it’s like electricity or gravity or mom’s apple pie—it doesn’t matter if I completely understand it or how it works or even how to make it myself… I’m just glad that it exists.

Now bearing with me is going to be important. I have a tendency to digress and wander, but have you ever heard of a linear adventure? That just makes for predictability and predictability is boring. Jesus may be a lot of things, but boring is just not one of them.

Case in point about predictability: last night – New Year’s Eve? I stayed home to wash my hair. Boring? Predictable? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m watching a TV show that involves a murder with multiple suspects and no real leads. Then, AH HA! The butler calls the cops because he has “something to tell them.” Let me guess? The butler knows who the killer is?? When he heads for his car I think, “Okay Butler, you’re going to get into your car and it’s going to blow up.” I figured he’d never make past the first commercial alive. After all, I’d watched enough TV as a child to be able to write the script for most of prime time television: Classic “Kill Off the Butler Scenario #96.” I watch expectantly as he gets into his car and…

DRIVES TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY????!!!!

Hey! No explosion? No Exit Stage Left??? Not even a spark or a punctured gas tank? Ok. I was wrong. Maybe I couldn’t write award winning scripts for nighttime TV. I continued to watch as his car nears the end of the driveway and KABLUE-EE!!!

The car bomb must have had a timer instead of being connected to the ignition. I guess I could still win an Emmy some day. I also guessed that the “butler didn’t do it.”

That movie made me think about predictable. “The predictable” is safe and easy to plan for and, well, boring. Take alcohol for example. That’s boring. Believe me: Been there. Seen that. Drunk it. The drill goes something like this: Girl meets boy. Boy flirts with Girl. Girl and Boy date. Girl gets dumped. Girl drinks to drown her sorrow. Girl gets so drunk that she spends hours puking up her soul and is nearly hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.

Extreme… but predictable. Thousands of high school and college kids, millions of people everyday get drunk for one reason or another (and everybody has their reason… only thing is that not one of them is original) and they all usually end up the same way the next morning. They roll over and open gritty, bloodshot eyeballs as they contemplate their bruised stomach and pounding head while savoring that pasty, “yuck-mouth” feeling coating their tongues. If you stop to think for just a moment… not only is the morning after boring and predictable, but it’s downright ugly. And thousands of high school and college kids, millions of people everyday do this for one predictably boring reason or another. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like an adventure to me.

I guess I only started thinking about adventure today. Today I realized that Jesus is the adventure. One year from the day I met him I decided to go back to where we met: a beach on the island of Maui. All great adventures need exotic locations – – a tropical island, a quaint cottage, but hey, even your office or the ladies bathroom become awesome on-site locations when Jesus is in charge. Anyways—Jesus and I have a date and I’m pressed for time. At the last minute I almost cancel even though I know that he’ll be there waiting… patiently… for me. I figure that if I bail, he’ll forgive me. He always does. He’ll still love me – he promised to love me forever. He’ll never leave me. No, he’d walk with me right into the next age. I was all set to forget all about him and go do something else…

Then I thought, “Wait. I love him too.” And figuring that no one has, or ever will, love me the way that he does, I got dressed and hauled my carcass to the beach. Talk about beautiful scenery: Kam III Beach in Kihe’i, Maui… definitely Oscar material for Best Direction, Costuming, and Set Design. As usual, I don’t have my lines memorized. I find that method acting is more my style. So I winged it. I just sat there on the rocks and talked to him. What he told me in return was so cool… and absolutely none of your business. I’m realizing that some things are best left between me and God. It was then that I decided to call my story “My Adventures with Jesus,” but it was a split second later that I thought up that one liner about the title being all wrong.

(Remember— it’s never about what happens when I’m with Jesus. It’s about who Jesus is and what He can do through me).

Anyways– I’m walking back to my car and I see a woman. “Happy New Years” I say to her. I notice that her feet are bare and she walks shufflingly, like her feet hurt or something. Her clothes are dirty and she looks lost. I figure it’s time for a scene change and she’s an extra or something. Y’know, put there by God as a bit player in my life to remind me of just how much I have to be thankful for.

“Predictable,” I think to myself as I walk on by.

“Do something,” Jesus tells me.
“Must I?” I whine, “And if so, what??”
“Her feet,” Jesus says.

I knew then that I had to give her my extra shoes that were in my car. I hurry to get them and return to see her eating out of a garbage can. I pressed a ten dollar bill into her hands and turned away ready to rush off clutching the shoes. She’d tried them on (they didn’t fit). She made me feel nervous and scared and sad all at once and I wanted to escape her suffering. Besides, I figured that I had done my good deed for the day. Time for a scene change or a commercial or SOMETHING. But Jesus had other plans. I got about thirty yards away before he asked me to go back. I stood there with my back to her. Struggling. Wanting the safe and the predictable, not this detour into the unpredictable adventure of caring for a hurting soul. He asked me again to go back.

“Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.”

He didn’t force me. Jesus will never force me to do anything. He’ll just lay out choices and trust me. When I turned back to her, that’s when I saw her fish a piece of cake out of the trash can. My heart just about broke. “Jesus??!! I can’t handle this. I’ve never done anything like this before. Help me! God, please help me.”

And he did. Jesus and I spent the morning with her and it forever altered my way of thinking. What really blows me away, though, is that it was all so unexpected. Yesterday, I didn’t even know that she existed. Today, she is all that I can think about. I pray without ceasing that she is packing her own bag to begin her own adventure with Jesus even as I write.

Being with her set the tone for my entire day… and what a day it was: my first birthday as a Christian. A year ago today on a beach in Maui I met a man named Jesus who’d been waiting for me all of my life. I went back to that beach today to meet Him and He introduced me to her. Later, that same day, Jesus and I returned to the beach. This time I was with another woman he’d recently introduced to me. We, three, sat watching other people ushering in the New Year with their barbeque and beer… while we just sat there enjoying the Creation. We had an awesome time talking about anything and all things. Jesus sure does have cool friends. She shared the amazing story of how she had begun her own adventure with Jesus. It was 100% unplanned, 100% awesome, and 100% ANYB (absolutely none of your business– you know the drill.)

To make a long story shorter, I’m here at home on my bedroom floor writing about today. What a day it was!! I pray to have many more days like this and even more that surpass it. Today, Jesus made my calling and election sure and boy, am I excited! But even unpredictable adventurers must sleep. So, for tonight, I bid you adieu. The curtain is closing or your screen is fading to black. Good night and God bless.

Adventurer’s Log Date: January 1, 1995

9:48 pm Maui, Hawai’i

*Clarification: I wrote the original story in 1995… but retold it in a blog post that I wrote on Christianforums.com back in February 2004.