Monday, December 27, 2010

My Big Dream - What's the problem?

A dear friend of mine recently sent me a book called "The Dream Giver".  The first part of the book is written as an allegory or a parable.  It is about Ordinary, a Nobody who lives in the Land of Familiar.  He decides to leave one day to follow his Big Dream.  I love "Pilgrim's Progress" and Randy Alcorn's "Edge of Eternity" so I quickly read the first part of the book.

The second part turns the story to focus on you and your journey to your  Big Dream.  The Big Dream that our Creator put into our hearts even before we are born.  This is where I put the book down and it gathered dust for a couple of months.

However, that little red book caught my eye again on a particularly dreary day in my life.  I began reading it again and with that I began asking myself a few questions.  Questions like...
  • Has YHVH put a Big Dream in me?
  • If yes, what is it?  Can I even begin to identify it?
  • If I can, why haven't I been pursuing it?  What is holding me back?
In the book, the author,  Bruce Wilkinson, lists the most common reasons he hears people give for no longer pursuing their Big Dream.  Honestly, none of them really resonated with me so I began to really start digging.  I know what my dream is.  It has changed a bit over the years, but it is still the same dream.
"Your Dream may not look quite the same as it did years ago.  But the essence of the Dream - the tug of longing you feel to do what God made you to do - is still there."
I've always wanted to write.  When I was young it was to become rich and famous.  As I got older it was just to support my family by doing something I enjoyed.  Now my dream is to write to honor my Adonai by helping others, even if it does not yield so much as a penny.

I've pursued my dream half-heartedly at times.  Sometimes I've pursued it with all my energies for a short time.  I've attended writer's conferences when I was still a child and even as recently as when I was pregnant with my youngest child.  But I have always ended up backing off.  Why?

Those are the questions I started digging into, looking for brutally honest answers. 

1. Time - I am a wife and a mother of three young children.  I work full-time outside the home to support my family.  I can barely keep up with basic housecleaning at times.  I'm happy if the clothes and dishes are washed (mind you washed, but not necessarily put away!).  If my floors are cleaned often enough to avoid attracting rodents I am satisfied.  When am I going to find time to seriously pursue writing!?  Even this post has been bouncing around in my head for days before I found time to sit down and type it out!  

2.  Guilt - A part of me feels that to truly pursue my Big Dream I would have to put my family second to it.  I already struggle with meeting my expectations of what it means to be a good wife and mother.  Pursuing my dream would mean falling even further from the mark of being a devoted and loving wife and mother.  It would be selfish of me to pursue my dream now that I have others in my life depending on me.  Or is this just another excuse?  A wonderful seemingly selfless excuse to cover up my next two, not so selfless reasons? 

3.  Too much work / Too hard - This is the excuse I hate, the one that makes me cringe.  The one I did not want to write down, but if I am going to be brutally honest I need to include it.  Bottom line - I'm lazy.  It is one of the things about myself that I hate.  Writing takes a lot of work, a lot of research and at the end of the day I'm exhausted and don't want to put in the time and effort.  It makes me wonder if I really want this Big Dream.  Seriously - I've always thought that those who really understand the importance of something and really want it will pursue it at all costs.  They will sacrifice all for it.  Am I willing to do that?

4.  Failure - I'm not good enough.  I will fail and others will mock my attempts.  I remember at a young age telling an adult I respected that I wanted to grow up to be a writer.  This well-meaning person proceeded to tell me how I needed to decide to do something more practical because if I pursued a writing career I would most likely be poor and starve.  So although I have always dreamed of writing and have always journaled and dabbled in writing, I pursued a career as an Accountant.  It is something I am good at and I enjoy it most of the time - but it is not my Dream.  Now that my dream has progressed from wanting fame and riches to helping others, I would have thought this fear would decrease.  After all, if I'm not looking to make money off my writing, there should be no fear of rejection, right?  So wrong!  I fear I don't know enough to truly help others.  I don't have enough knowledge or experience under my belt.  I fear that what I write, although well intentioned, will mislead others.  What if I fail them?  What if I fail my Adonai?

As I finished the latest chapter in this book, something caught my attention.  Bruce talks about Moses and how his life can give us three insights:

1.  A Big Dream always seems overwhelming at first.
2.  Ultimately, a Big Dream is aimed at meeting a Big Need in the world.
3.  While you still have breath, it's never too late to act on your Dream!

So there it is - my brutal honesty about my Big Dream.  I decided to share it here in order to hold myself accountable.  Ironic that I'm writing about my Big Dream of writing and why I've not really pursued it before.  Maybe, this will be the start of my journey.  My journey of one Ordinary Nobody pursuing her Big Dream to become the Somebody that YHVH intended for her to be.  A dream He placed in her heart as He was forming her in her mother's womb. 

Maybe...

(To be continued...?)