Dreams Are Free?

If anything would be attainable, If you could go anywhere, If you would be given a blank check, what would it read?

My bucket list includes…

• Host an exchange student
• Be a foster mom
• Adopt a bunch of children from Asia
• Get a degree in writing
• Publish a book
• Grow a big garden
• See the Grand Canyon and West Coast, USA
• Tour Switzerland
• Ride a gondola in Venice
• Take my nieces and nephews with me on a mission trip
• Teach ESL in Iraq
• Travel to Greece
• Buy my own little place with lots of perennials

When we stop dreaming, we stop living. It’s really scary to be at a point in life when you feel like you’ve lived up most of your dreams and you wonder now what. I’ve been there.

We need to keep on dreaming, hoping, pursuing, imagining goodness. It’s the pieces of heaven that are imprinted in our hearts I think – this desire for goodness and wholeness and perfect happiness.

But dreams actually cost. A lot. You exchange money for traveling, energy and love for relationships, sweat and tears for a garden and that may produce nothing but goldenrod and morning glory. Have you accepted the opportunity to exchange quietness for fullness, aloneness for refreshment, darkness for wisdom?

How often too are we living our dreams and don’t realize it? This struck me the other day; one of my dreams once upon a time was to have a house and work some sort of job so that I could also house several other girls, in a communal sort of living; I’ve been living this for the past four years now. It’s a lot tougher than I ever thought. Friendships richer, food sweeter, and lonely moments deeper. It’s called real life.

Dreams usually realize themselves in gritty overalls vs. pastel ballet gowns, dirty silverware and splattered windows, plastic cups vs. goblets. Ants and weeds vs. red tomatoes. Misunderstandings vs. close friendships.

Dreams shape us. We move toward the mental images we have before us. Our perceptions, expectations, our goals and desires motivate us. The lack thereof or the bitter taste of disappointment can leave us depressed. In this broken world, keep dreaming. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise – think on these things.

May we extend more kindness, more patience, more understanding and carry each other’s fragile dreams like little candles, with a hand held beside the flame to keep the wind from blowing it out. What’s on your bucket list?