Do you have big dreams? I mean really BIG dreams?
Maybe you are like me and you got to a point in life where you kind of gave up on your dreams. After all, dreaming of what you will do or become is pretty easy when you are young and your whole life is before you like an unwritten book. The older you get the more pages have already been scribbled upon, the less white space there is to fill. It’s easy to quit dreaming.
From the time I was very young, around 8 years old actually, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. That was my dream. Of course, I also wanted to own a farm and live like Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie, but I quickly ditched that idea when I learned how early she had to get up in the morning.
To pursue my dream, I started writing, and I never really stopped. My third-grade teacher gave me my first writing assignments--to write a story using our weekly spelling words. Shortly thereafter, I started my own Christian Magazine that I wrote by longhand until my parents bought me a small typewriter. I paid to copy it on the church copying machine and handed it out at church, accepting donations from any kind soul who would give me a few coins to help with costs. I published my first “real” piece in Grit magazine when I was in 7th grade. It was a piece on education. It was my first experience being edited, and I cried when I saw how much had been cut.
I wrote all through high school, working on the yearbook staff, relishing assignments other students hated. I kept journals and wrote for my own pleasure. Then I pursued and earned a degree with a double major in English and Journalism afterwards. Right after college, I began working as the chief (and only) editor and writer on staff for two national magazines and soon began freelancing from home as well. Two years later, as Ian and I began to think about buying a house and starting a family, I quit my full-time job and began freelancing from home.
As I “wifed” and mothered and grew older, I never stopped writing. Although I was my own boss, I really worked for others. I wrote on assignment for them. I edited their work. I helped their businesses succeed or their work get published. And, one day, I realized that in the process of helping other people achieve their dreams, I had forgotten my own.
Please don’t mistake me. I am not disparaging my role as a wife or mother. I am so thankful for both of those opportunities, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It’s just that sometimes it’s easy to get so wrapped up in our roles and responsibilities that we lose our identity and inspiration. My dreams somehow became mixed up and eventually encompassed by the wonderful ordinary day-to-day activities of my life.
Dreams are desires, ambitions, aspirations or even wishes. They can be realistic or unrealistic, attainable or unattainable, likely or unlikely. Anyone is free to dream. There is no price tag associated with dreaming. On the contrary, people who don’t dream seldom do great things.
But dreams are scary, especially once you lose the habit.
It’s scary to put a voice to that secret ambition. It’s scary to set down in a writing a goal that looks insane. It’s scary to tell someone about an aspiration that sounds so unrealistic. It’s scary to make a wish…
Because in doing so, we are setting ourselves up to fail, to be laughed at, to be disappointed. And life is full of enough disappointments already. Why would we want to add one more to the plate?
But dreams, really big dreams, are also the roller coaster of adulthood, a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups, the ice cream sundae once-a-week treat that we need to give us something to look forward to, to make our hearts race, to excite and motivate us.
Since starting The Girls Get Together, I have had the opportunity, the encouragement, to dream again and, more than that even, to dream BIG. It’s hard. It would be so much easier to never dream and, therefore, never have to worry about whether or not any of my dreams come true.
Then I remember, only big dreams produce big deals. You need big dreams to earn big dividends.
I want to do big things not just for my sake, not just for my family, but also and most importantly for the sake of the Kingdom. I want to share my stories and the stories of others to help women grow in their relationships with themselves, with each other, and with the Lord. I want to reach women with the gospel message. I want to encourage women to keep up the good fight. I want to help bring joy and laughter and love into their hearts and lives. And that takes BIG dreams. Today, I am dreaming big. What about you?
There is power in speaking your dream. What’s yours?