Do you remember the first time you accomplished one of your biggest dreams? Was it the first time you brought home an A on your report card or Aced an exam you studied weeks for? Was it the day you made the varsity basketball team or the night you performed your first solo in your company’s dance recital? Was it the moment you opened your acceptance letter to your favorite college or the moment you received your diploma from said college? What was your moment? Moreover, what was your initial dream?
Once you have that moment and that dream in your mind…ask yourself how did that moment make you feel: were you speechless, were you elated, were you ‘in Heaven’? My teammate Sandra explained her moment to me; it was the moment she completed decorating her hardest cake yet and knew in an instant it was what she wanting to do for a living. After all the planning, preparation, careful detailing and tears she put into making that cake [her tears were not literally in the cake] she stepped back and saw her craftsmanship in the delicate icing and felt an expression capture her entire soul. She called it, “The expression of extreme joy.”
Now, I truly believe that every human is meant to feel this expression of extreme joy at least once in their life—in fact I believe that we should feel it more than just once. However, I don’t think we could every feel such a deep bliss without having the trials, the errors, the tears, the little victories and the passion and ambition to keep fighting for that moment when our dream is reached. But in order to fight for a dream you have to dream it first.
Out of everything that has happened to me this month, out of all of the firsts I have experienced: preaching my first sermon [not just on this race, but in my life], attempting ‘Insanity’ (an intense cardio, muscular and endurance workout regimen) for the first time and truly enjoying it), playing the mandolin for the first time [it made me feel on top of the world], and learning I have the gift of intercession (the special ability that God gives to pray for extended periods of time on a regular basis and see frequent and specific answers to prayer to a degree much greater than that of the average follower of Christ)—the one thought that has dominated them all is the magnitude of dreams; not just there enormity but the importance of having them.
Six months ago in Bolivia God asked me to dream again, and not just small dreams, but my biggest dreams I had as a child and the deep dreams I have now as an adult. Since then I have been asking myself, “What were my childhood dreams? What are my unfathomable dreams now?” This month, for the first time, I was truly able to write those dreams down and with them written down I was able to see how not just one dream, but every dream intertwined with another. I realized that each one of my dreams was a vital part of God’s magnificent puzzle for my life and without them, my puzzle will never be completed.
Whether you realize it or not, you have a puzzle, of sorts, to be complete too. I use the word ‘puzzle’ as an analogy. God wants you to dream and give your biggest and most unfathomable dreams to Him because when you do He can help you achieve them. No dream is too big for God, He created us to dream and longs for us to dream because in our endeavor to achieve our dreams His glory can be seen. That is when the expression of extreme joy will happen; when your dream glorifies God. And even if at the end of our lives we realize we did not reach one of our dreams, we will know that in God’s eyes the best part of our dream was the journey we took with Him to reach it.
