Dare to Dream

When I was a little girl my mom and dad took me with them to see a well-known evangelist. As I was sitting there watching the singers under the bright lights of the stage, I was amazed at the beautiful dresses they were wearing. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I had stated with my mouth wide open and looking all dreamy eyed that I wanted dresses like those. My dad had gotten so mad at me and simply told me that I could not have anything like that, and I won’t ever get anything like that. My spirit was crushed.

I never wanted to be on a platform singing or taking center stage on anything. I just simply wanted beautiful dresses and clothes. My actual dream growing up was to be a librarian. I have always loved books. Because of pain in my legs growing up I would sit for hours under trees and create fairy gardens or landscape around live springs. And I would dream of what I could do when I grew up. Yet as I grew older, my dreams were constantly crushed. At the age of eight I had my first of many anxiety attacks, and doctors back then didn’t realize that children could have anxiety attacks or be depressed. I was diagnosed with a possible stomach flu. I had gotten to a point where I gave up dreaming. My dreams had become a dream of escape. A dream of just wanting someone, anyone to come rescue me. Then as I got older, I started to think that nobody was going to come rescue me. I was on my own.

One day in the car while my dad was inside somewhere, my mom had said, “it was ok to dream. Everybody has to have a dream.”  Without dreams and vision people just shrivel up and die. Dreams are so important to living. Dreams give hope. My dad realized that later in life. His dream is to find a great treasure. His dream keeps him going, it keeps him healthy. Even though it would take me many years to realize that it was alright for me to have dreams of my own. I still had to and still to this day face dream killers. But the greatest thing I had to face was that we do have a rescuer, a Savior. And our Savior is the one that gives us our greatest dreams. I had to realize that I am not on my own in this life. If our dreams are bigger than we are and impossible for us to do on our own, then we know they are from God. Our part is to walk through the process of achieving those dreams. So, we all need to go back to where we left our hopes and dreams and pick them up, and realize that it is God who gave us those big dreams and start walking and living once again.

Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)  “Where there is no vision, the people perish …”