Forgotten Dreams

Dreams.

I have them often. And when I say often I mean every night for months on end and then maybe I'll get a break for a while.

There are a billion resources to help guide you in analyzing and interpreting your dreams. You hear all types of things about dreams. Don't eat right before you go to sleep. What certain dreams mean. So forth and so on. But as Joseph said (Genesis 40:8), interpreting dreams is God's business. 

As my dreams became increasingly realistic, with more details that made sense in "real life" than not, I started including them in my journal entries. A fascinating and frightening trend I recognized is that these spurts of dreams always come on the cusp of some big event in my life, positive or negative. 

I don't know how the stars line up and I'm not interested in making direct correlations with what occurs in the dreams and what occurs in "real life", but as my most recent dream had me literally confused when I woke up this morning because it was so realistic, it got me thinking. I'm getting ready to go on my third mission trip, and that's a pretty big deal. But I know that, and usually the dreams come before something of which I'm not aware.

So this morning I started thinking, maybe I have so many dreams while I'm sleeping because I've stopped dreaming when I'm awake.

Maybe my brain is so active at night because during the day it's so full of boring adult rigmarole that nothing creative fits in.

Don't get me wrong. I love my life. I have the best friends in the entire universe, and I'm borderline obsessed with my support system. Really, your girl is blessed.

And my job is the best. God completely blessed me with a career that fits me rather than continuing to allow me to try to fit myself into a job.

But keeping all of the details of which clinic I'm visiting and which class I'm teaching and how long it takes to get to either (for those of you who don't know, I don't have an actual office...I travel every day) is less than exciting. Pairing that with which child I'm babysitting after work and which team I'm serving on at church makes for a full brain. Add in catch up sessions with friends and their issues (for which I don't mind praying), and my personal struggles (which I have a hard time sharing with others), and that's just a lot of grown up blah de blah that's taking up space in my head where dreams belong.

I used to have dreams for my life. I had a ton of them. But things never worked out "the way I wanted," and I never seemed to get "what I worked for" so somewhere a long the way I just let those dreams die.

It didn't occur to me that just because life hasn't happened the way I had planned, that those dreams weren't placed in my heart by God.

"This vision is for a future time.

It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled.

If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, 

for it will surely take place.

It will not be delayed."

Habakkuk 2:3 (NLT)

I recently agreed to be in the Spring class for the apprenticeship team for emerging leaders in our children's ministry. It's a six-month commitment where we learn the ins-and-outs of children's ministry, and have required reading and meet with an amazing team of devoted volunteers. I am so excited to have been asked to join, and am looking forward to what the next six months adds into my life. Having worked vocationally in a church before, this is a crazy full circle that God is drawing, and I love to experience things from the volunteer perspective.

But there is an email that has been sitting in my inbox for weeks, unanswered. Those who know me know I am all over deadlines and making sure information is correct and detailed and returned to the sender. I love making To Do Lists and revel in checking things off. And everything in this email has been checked off except one thing:

"Please email me your top 3 goals ...in this Apprentice Team role by January 20th."

This just sits. It sits and waits for me every day. I tagged it as "Unread" so the bold font would jump out and remind me to respond. But I have nothing to say. I have no goals. I've prayed for God to reveal them to me so I don't respond with the quintessential "to do God's will," because while that is a goal, that should be my goal for every second of every day. 

God is making me figure this one out on my own and I don't like it. When I accepted, this opportunity came just after a conversation with one of my closest, and wisest, friends about boundaries. As a homeschooling mother and ministry leader herself, she recognizes my lack of boundaries and my over-willingness to shout "Yes!" to anything that comes my way, overtaxing myself and giving people far less quality than they deserve. 

So as I made the promise to her and myself to scale back, this opportunity presented itself. I prayed. Long. This apprenticeship deal sounded amazing, but what about my boundaries? 

Finally, I felt God nudging me to confirm my participation. Actually, let me not lie. I knew I was supposed to say "Yes" the second it was presented to me. But what about my boundaries????

I've been disobedient enough times in 25 short years to realize it's better to just walk straight the first time and see how The Lord reveals His blessings in hindsight than to fight because of whatever reasoning in my head that makes better sense.

So, I obeyed. But how in all of the world do I figure out goals for something I didn't ask to do in the first place?

Then this morning I realized: my first goal is to recover my dreams.

Do you have any dreams you've let go of?

Maybe you have new dreams that need to be born.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whichever season of life you're in: don't stop dreaming. 

If God has placed these dreams in our hearts, He hasn't forgotten, even if we have. There just may be some other lessons we need to learn to be able to accept and appreciate what those dreams will bring into our lives.

"Trust in the Lord and do what is good;

dwell in the land and live securely.

Take delight in the Lord, 

and He will give you your heart's desires.

Commit your way to the Lord;

trust in Him, and He will act,

making your righteousness shine like the dawn, 

your justice like the noonday."

Psalm 37:3-6 (HCSB) 

Today, I'm praying for the dreamers.

"And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; 

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

your young men shall see visions:"

Joel 2:28 (KJV)