Last week I asked you readers about your biggest dreams in life. A big thank you to those who wrote back to share their stories. Here they are…
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My dream? I never had dreams as a child and into much of my adulthood. All I could do was survive the bad choices of others. My only dreams in those days were really found in books. I vicariously dreamed through characters on paper. Away from books, I had to keep my wits about me in a war not of my choice.
My life was not that of a budding princess looking out over her kingdom and the kingdoms beyond. That is... until I met the Dream Giver.
Although I met Him when I was seventeen, it took many, many years to understand that having a dream was even possible... or good. Very long story short, over 40 years of traveling with the Dream Giver, I have come to understand dreams are possible no matter what. Maybe you never had a dream, saw multiple deaths of dreams, or laid down dreams and buried them, only to see them spring from the soil again—I have experienced all of that in my 60 plus years of life.
And yet, in all this, I have learned to walk at pace with the Dream Giver, not racing ahead or lagging behind. I keep in lockstep with Him, although some days He has to redirect or carry me. I do finally have dreams—quite a few actually—but the best thing of all is in my journey. It is the Dream Giver who fills my heart; the dreams are the overflow of an abundant heart.
Betsy, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota
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The Dream began in elementary school when I played “school” with neighborhood kids on the outside steps of our house on 25 ½ Street in Minneapolis. We used the steps to indicate grade levels in school and advanced by throwing a little pebble from step to step. If only moving from one grade to the next higher one was that simple!
That game planted the idea in my mind that not only did I love learning, I wanted to be a teacher. And so the Dream began.
Experiences in elementary, junior high, and high school reinforced my desire to teach someday, but the Dream was blurry. When college coursework filled the majority of my waking hours, future fulfilment of my Dream seemed light years away. Though hazy, the Dream began to take a different shape—a desire to teach in a college.
Then life raced ahead through college graduation, marriage, and my first teaching job in the local high school. But my next career took precedence over teaching, and my Dream moved further away. Soon life became richer and more fulfilling than I could have imagined with the birth of each child. And I was content, even willing, to let the Dream go.
But one day, my husband Phil remembered my Dream when he noticed an ad in the local paper for an adjunct instructor for a night class at the local college. He urged me to apply, and I did. And the Dream began to emerge out of the shadows of homemaking and child-rearing. Following years of graduate classes which led to the prerequisite degree, the Dream became reality, and I was hired to teach fulltime in a college, the Dream fulfilled.
Avis, Newfolden, Minnesota
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My dream is to watch people go for the supernatural by presenting spiritual challenges in the form of a Christian novel.
Hank, Homestead, Florida
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And the rest of my story…
In February of this year, Jim Rubart, one of my favorite authors who happens to be my friend too, sent me an email, inviting me to his academy for writers. He knew I would benefit from it, he said.
I didn’t tell him how I was worn down by the writing, how I had a love-hate relationship with the process, how I was ready to drown the Dream. I didn’t want to scare him off. But maybe the truth—instead of excuses—was important.
“I’m struggling in the what-on-earth-am-I-doing phase of my writing,” I wrote back to him. And maybe I expected he would release me to my floundering.
“Then it’s exactly what you need,” he said.
I enrolled in his academy for October 10-14, 2019.
“This is my last thing,” I told myself and others.
After this, no more conferences or workshops; I was done spending money on excellent advice that got me nowhere. After this, no more longing flung out onto the waters; I was tired of hauling empty nets back into the boat. After this, no more livelihood slated for the future; I was ready for something solid set in the present.
But sometimes life preservers look different from what we think.
Sometimes they look like intimate settings for eight students in a rented house in Seattle. Sometimes they look like four intense days of learning more about marketing and social media, discovering our identities and brands, and working one-on-one with someone who can tailor a plan for our writing futures.
And sometimes they look like hope.
(This wasn’t an ad for my friend Jim’s academy, but since you’re curious now, click here for the link. It’s life-changing.)
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.