Twenty eight weeks ago, I was researching flights to Spain and Spanish immersion courses… a dream I’ve had for seven years. Instead, that same week, I applied for 
the World Race.
Yesterday, I finished the journal I started in July of last year. I began the entry with a piece of common prayer.
Pour out your spirit, LORD:: that we may dream your dream.
After filling the page with pleas and dreams, completely candid before Him… begging for my heart’s desires to be approved, changed, or given a word of peace for my waiting… I looked back.
The first entry in my journal is from 9th July 2012
The Reversal:: Ruth is a story of hope. A promise that God is still in control. Ruth begins with the death of dreams.
This year has been a year of dreams; a year of some dreams fulfilled and others stolen… some in "plan purgatory". Months of slowly learning trying to learn the grace of laying my dreams at the foot of the cross.
If I’m being honest, I’m not there yet. There are days that I resent the race…days that I hold newborn babies, or see friends buying houses, or pass a woman pushing a jogging stroller on my run, and I am filled with hurt. Those were in my five-year plan. ((God OBVIOUSLY didn’t consult my rider)). There are plans and dreams of mine that have been put on hold because of the race. Sometimes I am so consumed with hurt that I forget… the race is a dream of mine too.
So this week, with a moleskin full of prayers, lists, tears, and dreams I will give myself grace through this struggle. And remember the promise of Ruth… God is in control. His thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways are not my ways (Isaiah 55:8) and some days some weeks I have to spoon feed myself those truths. Some days I have to verbally list the blessings in my life, lest I forget and become distracted by another’s joy.
After the initial humiliation and realization that one year later, and twenty three years young, I still battle with laying down my dreams… I continued to look through my journal. While there are pages and pages of prayers that have seemingly gone unanswered…there are also lists of blessings, memories of vacations and surprise day trips into Washington D.C. This year, I have received more gifs than I would have ever dared ask for!
“God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything that He knows.”- Tim Keller
If I learn nothing else but this in the following year, I will count the year a success:: Sweet dreams are made of the things that are given from Him and not schemed up by my emotional self.
Here’s to another year of journals, lessons, tears, blessings and adventures… and three fist pumps for a God that has new mercies every morning.
