My daughter is pure adventurer. That or a klutz. Adalyn runs everywhere. Everywhere. She jumps and plays and runs. And that means she falls. Often. And so she has bruises, scrapes, cuts, bumps, and boo-boos. They happen. And I don’t want my daughter to think that boo-boos are bad or something to be scared of. So one day, I told her that “Boo-boos are signs of adventure.” I don’t know if I made it up or pulled it out of a memory that I had forgotten. But it has stuck in our family. “Boo-boos are signs of adventure.” And when another boo-boo happens (which is a daily occurrence) we simply remind her of the adventure.

Adalyn has also started saying something else lately. “When I get bigger…” and then she will fill in the blank with whatever she wants to do now but we won’t let her do at the time.  Most of them are silly and they make us laugh. “When I get bigger I can…Use a sponge too…Have big pieces of chocolate…Take my shirt off like daddy.” But one stood out to me today: “When I get bigger I will like adventures.”

Gina and I just started reading “One Thousand Gifts” by Ann Voskamp. The first chapter was hard for me to get through. It talks a bit about boo-boos; scars. A little over two years ago my Pops was killed. No good-bye. And that’s hard to think about. It hurts. And it is easy for me to feel angry that he was “taken” from us; that my Adalyn will miss out on so many things with my dad. Some boo-boos hurt worse than others.

But boo-boos are signs of adventure. And the pain I feel at the loss of my dad is because the adventure was so amazing. And yeah, it sucks. But I am so infinitely grateful for the adventures with Pops! Thankful.

When Adalyn says “When I get bigger I will like adventures” she’s talking about the pain of the boo-boos being too much for her right now. And I want to tell her that boo-boos don’t get lighter or easier  but they usually get tougher and more painful. But the adventures get amazingly better, too. And each adventure is something to be thankful for. We ought to be GRATEFUL for our boo-boos. Sometimes we can’t have the adventure without them.

I hope my daughter LOVES adventure when she gets big. I hope she loves adventure when she’s small. And I hope that she learns to be grateful for her boo-boos.

I hope I do, too.