Make the team.
Make the grades.
Earn scholarships.
Get into a great college.
Graduate with honors.
Start an awesome career.
Get married.
Have kids.
These were the goals of my life. The American checklist of how life is supposed to go. In fact this checklist was instilled upon me very early in life. I’m not sure who or what exactly set this idea in front of me. It could have been what I watched on the 90’s sitcoms or in the hundreds of novels I read. Maybe it was the socially accepted order of life events, even. It could have been punctuated with parents telling me they wanted more for me than they had themselves and this was the way to get more.
I’m a by-the-book kind of girl for the most part. It’s easy for me to feel accomplished when my checklists are fulfilled. So I strived, putting full effort into completing my socially accepted list that would make me get more out of life.
That is until I couldn’t. Something was wrong and didn’t feel right in the middle of this list. Everything on that list is checked off, but it wasn’t in the socially accepted order, though. I married at 20. I went into my junior year of college not knowing my last name when attendance was taken. The professor loved teasing me about it. In that time period, I began owning who I was and who I was meant to be.
I realized that checklist limited me. You see, there was no wiggle room for the ability to dream. I didn’t even know dreaming was an option, quite honestly.
But dreaming started when I saw my future wasn’t limited to that restricted list I knew. There was more. In fact, there was much more. I learned of a God who is the creator of all things. A God, who knew before creation, the importance and role of every single thing around me.
That fact right here opened my little mind to endless possibilities and a search to find who I was created to be.
As years pass and the more I study God, am in relationship with Him who creates, and live His Truths, the more and more I see how important it is to dream. My dreams come to align with who He’s created me to be.
He created me to be a wife at 20 years old.
He created me to start a career as a middle school teacher.
He created me to be a stay at home mom.
He created me to be a bible teacher.
He created me to be a writer.
And I want more. I don’t want more things. I mean that would be nice, don’t get me wrong, especially as I’m sitting here staring out into my small, cluttered three bedroom home with one bathroom for now five of us, I dream of a much larger home. A few years ago I’d have wanted that large home for selfish reasons. Maybe even status. I now dream of a larger home to house my growing family. I dream that that home would be open to fellowship for women and teens. To house leadership meetings in my home comfortably. To minister to my family and to others.
I dream of adopting at least one child. Embodying the principle noted in James 1:27. Displaying God’s love by welcoming a child of God into our earthly family and binding us together as an incredible force for God’s army.
In the future, that house could be the safe place for my teenage kids and their friends. A place to find refuge and consistently be shown the love of God and the Truths of God’s Word modeled for them.
That house would be where the love would multiply—All because God created.
He created me to dream.
This blog post is part of a #FridayFive link-up. Check out the others writing about dreams at this link.
