An Awfully Big Adventure (From The Gospel According to Alice the Lost Chapters)

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 KJV

Windows…

If you think about it, J. M. Barrie spent 362 pages talking about what happened when you shut them and when you chose to leave them open.

To be fixated on the opening and closing of windows, he must have known a thing or two about shutting down, shutting out and boarding up entryways to keep the bad stuff at bay.

I think we all understand that, don’t you?

But if we spend our lives with our windows closed, afraid of what might get out…

We’ll never let in the good stuff.

When it came to these impenetrable windows, Wendy Darling happened upon a boy who braved them with valor…

Who fought mean, old captains with menacing hooks and crocodiles with ticking clocks on distant islands not down on any map…

And in the opening of her window, her life was never the same, her distance from the ground never again ordinary, her nightgown never again snuggly flat, always flying in the breeze to a place that only the chosen could visit. 

When Peter came to Wendy Darling’s window, she made a choice that night….

She took his hand.

She did what most cannot.

She chose the adventure God had planned for her and what an adventure it was! God must have really loved Wendy to not bring her destiny to her doorstep but her windowsill. I love that about God.

Ordinary isn’t His style. 

As our own clocks tick down like gators on pirated islands, we must ask ourselves one question…  

Do we want to be safe…

Or do we want to be happy?

I always felt like Wendy was eternally hesitant to reach her fullest potential in feeling safest while feeling most afraid and that was why God sent her the Pan. It wasn’t proper for young girls to jump out windows with boys who never grew up, was it?

But far too often we discount the Lost Boys in our lives when Jesus embraced them – fully, wholly, completely, taking them on a journey to do immaculately crazy things. Heal the blind. Walk on water. Still the storm.

These Lost Boys have much to teach us.

Much more than we could teach them, perhaps.

 Safe in her bed at midnight…

Wendy lived a life of shutting out but because she let Peter in, she didn’t merely dream of adventure. She let the air flutter beneath her feet, no choice but to have absolute trust in the One who had beckoned her to the window’s ledge.

Because of a boy that braved a shut-tight window, Wendy was able to close her eyes, hop the second floor and find a happy thought towards the moon.

It was this happy thought and Peter’s hand that led her to an adventure, a world where boys never grow up, first kisses are frozen in time, fairies are real… and good things happen in the midst of the scary stuff.

In looking back, God’s grace shown through so vibrantly and vividly in Wendy Darling and her Lost Boys. Peter was brave because she could not be and she was the voice of reason that reigned him in when he’d rather chase a shadow than rest in the light a while.

While there are so many lessons to learn from J.M. Barrie's classic tale of love, the greatest is this… no one is brave alone. We are braver together – especially when God beckons us to the window.

So, why not?

If you go, I will go too.

Let’s find out what it’s like to trust God with the impossible, with open windows and open hearts… and maybe, just maybe, fly away to somewhere we will never have to grow up again.

** Want to read more? Find The Gospel According to Alice and The Gospel According to Alice: The Lost Chapters wherever books are sold. Need to talk about the lessons you’re learning in your own life? Book a wise counsel appointment in our virtual office. Together we will figure out how to open the window, our minds or our hearts one more time. You can do this!