Now for a rather serious post.
There's something God has really been working in my heart for a while now.
You know when you're little and even when you're old I suppose, people will always tell you to never stop chasing your dream.
"Don't give up," they say.
"Life isn't worth anything if you don't have a dream," they say.
It might even be more so in my household because I grew up in a house that loved Disney and Walt Disney's biggest platform was that a dream was always worth chasing no matter how long it took, how much you had to sacrifice or how hard you have to work for it.
On the surface, it's all a nice notion, but God has really been teaching me how very wrong that idea is.
I have a lot of dreams. I'm a dreamer. I've gone through so many passionate phases of dreaming of owning a cake bakery, or being a photographer for National Geographic (before they went entirely to freelance), being a poet or a writer or you name it. But the newest dream and the longest lasting was I wanted to be a writer.
I feel like I've wanted to do that for so long and to help me get there, I wanted and dreamed and wished to go to this school in Chicago called Columbia College Chicago where I could major in literature and creative writing. As a part of their program, as a junior and senior in college I could work on my own book and my senior year, the school would publish it for me. The professors are still currently working in the writing field and could have taught me how to make writing into a career. I could have found a place in the city and take a train back home whenever I felt like I needed to visit my family. It was never too far away. It was a splendid dream. And one very attainable.
I wanted to study/minor in film and possible become a documentary filmmaker as well, traveling around the world documenting what god was doing in it. Kind of like the Furious Love, Finger of God, and Father of Light guy.
But the longer I'm here in South Africa, and the more stories I hear of how God has His own plans in peoples lives, the more I come to realize that I might never see any of my dreams come to pass. And the crazy part is, I've got to learn to surrender that.
The minute I said yes to Jesus, and every day since, I've had to wake up and "die to myself" and that includes let my dreams die. Because anything I could dream for myself is way less fulfilling than what God could dream for me.
Sometimes it can be a little hard hearing from all my friends back home either through snail mail or Facebook or instagram or whatever because most of them are freshman in college and I hear about all of these things I've always dreamed of having. I hear about the dorms and the classes and the food and the people and the freedom and just the college life. I think about the fact that perhaps that will NEVER be in God's plan for me. Perhaps I will never go to college. And that literally breaks my heart.
I think about the fact that perhaps I will never be a writer. Maybe I will never be a film maker. Maybe I will never live in Chicago or have my little puppies or a flat in the city or husband with a child. I've no idea.
I think about all these things I've dreamed of, all these dreams I would give anything to achieve. My heart breaks at the thought that my dreams might never happen. But there's a quiet resolution that I must just surrender them to God. Because sometimes our dreams can hold us back from the fullness of His plan.
I always thought dreams were such a great thing. They gave purpose to life, a goal and something to strive for. But then again, when I chose Jesus, I chose Him as my purpose in live, the Father as my goal, and eternity as something to strive for.
As much as I don't want to and as hard as it is, I must learn to be content with the prospect of a dream dying. I must learn to content with the possibility that they might never happen. But I must understand that God will give me a new dream that matches His plan if they don't now.
Yeah, a dream might be a wish your heart makes, but isn't your heart deceitful?
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