It's Been a While...and Dreams

Yes, it has. Like many people there are times I start projects with the greatest of intentions and then end up dropping them when my life gets to busy, I am no longer in the mood, whatever. Well, I'm back. I just had a great time reading my old entries from last year, remembering the end of that season in Atlanta, and so I want to be able to look back on this time in my life as well.

So what has happened since then? Well to sum up, I continue to enjoy being with my family, and I love being around my beloved animals. As I had hoped, I did in fact take my precious time with Him where I feel His calm and tenderness. Yes, these things that happen in us and between us and God are fortunately not isolated to the places where they first began.

At the start of this year I had a verse on my mind: Isaiah 43:18. It speaks about not dwelling on the past; that God is doing a new thing. I love it. The concepts of "new things" and "change" have been like water to my soul the past many years. The idea of it beginning to take place, well, that is especially like a fountain that quenches the old thirst inside.

I wrote a manuscript 4 years ago that has just been published. It is dear to me, and it displays the first change I have known of for some time...

My Old Dreams

For a long time I have felt dreams within me. They are dreams that many who love me are familiar with, at least in pieces. They are dreams that have laid silently in my soul, becoming stronger in my heart, and filling me with my sense of life-giving purpose. They are dreams I have been waiting for. Yes, waiting. And gazing tenaciously into the future to offer myself hope. These two things, waiting and gazing, they have become so familiar to me that I know every facet of the words and the stillness in between.

So what are these dreams? Though I have never shared them so publicly before, they are real parts of me. So here goes. When I was nineteen years old two distinct things took place as the very edge of feelings that would grow and shine forth...

The first is a feeling of my husband...someone I had not yet met. At this point I had never really known what God had in store, and I was just beginning to take a leap into trusting Him with all my heart. As I began doing this, I considered being with someone God had chosen for me. To make a long story short, I began to feel the assurance of being brought a wonderful man, better than the ones I had hoped I could make wonderful for me. Slowly I began sensing and seeing in my head details of who he was. It felt like being home - imagining us together - like someone I knew who was away a really long time. And I began to feel it was best to wait for him. I had no idea at that point that the journey would take me 9 years (so far). There is too much to write on the ups, downs, shades of painful struggle, and amazing touches God has clearly put on this story. But there will be a time for that. I continue to want to hope, soon.

The second feeling I had was that the experience I had just had with God - one where He invited me to prioritize Him and seemingly give up what i wanted in exchange for His will - was one I would share with many. I had a dream around this time that I was talking in front of a large group of women at a church about things of this nature. As the years have gone by, this feeling has only continued to develop (as has the one of my husband). The past few years I have known in my gut that i was put here to share my stories with others (as i began in the book) to be used by God as a tool of His wisdom and even His power, and to speak and write along with counsel/minister to people; and to work with my husband as a pair.

These dreams have intertwined with my heart's desire and deep sense of purpose. In the silence that I never intended to have these many years, I have only been prepared for their fruition. God knew I must be deeper in Him than where i was many years ago. He also knew I must know inside that my value lay not in what I would do here. But in who I am with Him. When I would wake in the silence all those many days I would say to my God, "You and me." And I learned to feel that that was enough.

But these desires were put there on purpose. And I have felt them calling out. Has it been hard not having them fulfilled and having only silence? Greatly. It is like missing a large part of something deep within. Of course the challenge is what made it perseverance; and perseverance is what makes the time useful. Has it been hard continuing to believe when nothing happens? Of course. Sometimes harder than others. But there is a way that destiny knocks at our hearts without ceasing, even if it becomes a quiet knock compared to that of logic. While many times I have wondered how it will all happen, something in me has always known it will. And when I cry because the ache is still there and I look at the past, I take comfort in a new breeze that passes by....a feeling and Word that God really does things. And He is doing something new. I know He is even more than what I have seen. I tell Him that often, and with His help I still expect Him to show it.