I'm Going on an Adventure

I love traveling. It's a fantastic adventure. You wade through the crowds at an airport, seat yourself next to perfect strangers on an airplane, and land in a completely foreign city ripe for exploring. It's exhilarating, a bit exhausting, and--

terrifying.

I currently find myself 39,000 feet (or 11,888 or so meters as I shall have to get used to talking about it) above the middle of North America next to a British couple with a love of American gangster films seven and a half hours from of London and, admittedly, with a stone weighing in the pit of my stomach. I should be wildly excited, bouncing around the cabin, annoying the folks next to me, in great need of a sedative, but instead I find it a bit harder to breath than normal. See, I'm going to study in Oxford, England. What's more, I'm to study J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I get to live in a flat in the city with other students (albeit Americans), shop at the local Tesco, frequent the pub down the way, take a weekend to go to London (or Edinburgh or Dublin or wherever), join a local parish, punt on the river, take a stroll through Christ Church meadows--I should be unbearably, annoyingly excited.

And while I certainly am, I am going without knowing anyone there (including my classmates from my home university), without access to my friends and family (other than online), as a cash strapped college student (redundant, I know), having not read the entirety of LOTR since middle school, and I'm studying one of the brightest men to have lived where he lived and wrote with the hopes of vindicating Peter Jackson's films as being worthy of Tolkien's legacy (or something) in the city where, doubtless, dwell some of the most vehement Tolkien purists. Perhaps it doesn't sound like an impressive list of things against me, but as an extrovert who considers her friends to be family, who wants to travel afterwards, and who considers herself to be fairly intelligent this is a bit daunting.

To be completely truthful, there was a reasonable, or rather unreasonable, part of me that did not want to go and would much rather just stay at home with my family where it's familiar, safe, and comfortable.

Of course, that is completely ridiculous.

Forget that my parents have paid for this, or that I'd have to go back to school anyway, or that it's a once in a lifetime opportunity--I have dreamed of doing something like this since middle school. I get to study Tolkien. In Oxford. Are you KIDDING ME? I get an entire semester of studying one of my favorite stories where it was written. I can go and study in the Eagle and Child where the Inklings met. I shouldn't be surprised that I'm terrified--yeah, this is indeed a daunting thing I go to do! It's one of those things in stories where the mentor says gravely, "Don't screw this up." It's a rare, precious opportunity I have been given by God.

I should be nervous, yes, but I shouldn't let these nerves get to me like they are. I want to do this. I have people cheering me on, praying for me. And I have the Lord God Almighty with me. Terror and fear should be the furthest things from me.

Admittedly, on a super geeky note, feel very much like Bilbo Baggins. I've stepped out my door, not knowing quite where I'll be swept off to, not knowing my companions, going to do something I feel quite unprepared for, having already forgotten something, and about to embark on a grand, life changing adventure.

And so I go. I go still nervous, but with the assurance that it will be alright, that God won't let be fail.

I'm going on an adventure.