Time to Dream Again

Melissa—When I wrestled with a sense of victimhood, sometime back, I had to find peace in the fact that God is right in the middle of whatever is going on right now. And as I think of that time period, it leads me to a recent conversation with two very dear friends that are in intense battles of their own. We were catching up on the latest with each other when I started telling them about a meeting I recently had with a cherished voice in my life. In my conversation with this person she told me that it was time for me to dream again, and dream big (she was talking about dreaming about the future). I shared this with my friends and I could see that it hit them like it hit me. Dreaming has not been an exciting concept for a while for any of the three of us due to experience and our current state. We began to talk about what dreaming looks like and began to realize some things. The three of us have all grown up in church and are the types who truly want to stay right in the middle of the will of God. While that is not a bad thing it can take an extreme turn that you don’t even realize until you hit moments like this. The extreme comes when you have done all you know to do to be in God’s will (albeit stumbling through it), but you hit a rough patch and all you can figure is you made one bad decision that put you in this current situation. The extreme part of it is the “witch hunt” for what you did wrong so you can call it by name, repent and hopefully get back on God’s path for your life… if it’s not too late. The extreme is based in idealism. My friends and I realized that for the most part we really don’t know what it means to “dream big” because we have been operating in “sweet little Christian girl” idealisms for our lives. These type of idealisms form a picture of destiny according to our current understanding of Who God is and how He works filtered through our family, religious culture and nation’s cultures and traditions. And yet, our Father has intentionally put in place all the intricacies He works in to establish His Kingdom on this earth through us.  (Part 3 of 6)