This past week, several parents flew to Northeast India to spend time with their kids, my parents being one of them. It was astonishing to see how many parents came to the most inconvenient location and lived in an uncomfortable area to see what life looks like for their child.
When they arrived we all burst into tears! Having them here made me realize I am so much more independent and confident in myself because my parents put me in God’s hands. They encouraged me to go on this trip even though it would be hard for them. They sent me off and trusted God with my life. I am who I am because my parents put me before themselves. They wanted me to learn and grow, even if that meant being away from them.
I am so thankful for parents that support me in what I do, trust me, love me no matter what, and will always be there for me.
After talking to parents, I realized that as your children grow up and become adults, you return to a place where you are again finding what you want to do with your life.
As I am almost 19 and thinking about the future, I have to trust God with my future, as I talked about in my last blog.
But I am realizing now that we are allowed to dream, and not dream as America does.
America claims to be the land of dreams, but they are all based more on success, than passion, they are more self-centered than servant-centered.
Dreaming is choosing what career you want at college.
Dreaming is laughed at when people chase the things that seem impossible, and few people dare to do that, because failure is the worst thing our culture can imagine.
What if we let ourselves dream?
I went to a dream and values inventory session led by one my my leaders, Emily. The purpose of this time was to find our core values, write down every possible dream that comes to mind, and see where the two correlate to find what we want to do with our lives.
To begin, she gave us a list with many values on it, for example: Achievement, respect, beauty, creativity, curiosity, empathy, innovation, productivity, security, trust, flexibility, harmony, growth…
We looked at this list and wrote down anything that might possible be one of our values. I probably wrote down 30 or so.
From there, you begin to narrow it down to 5-6.
To narrow it down, it’s helpful to ask the question, “Why do I value this?” Because often that can lead you to see that it is actually a different value that this is reflecting. For example, I wrote down achievement as a value, but when I asked myself why I valued it, I came to the conclusion that achievements often lead to others respect, and respect is really what I value. Another example is I initially wrote down dependability, but the bigger root in that is that I value trust, and someone being dependable builds my trust.
Anther way to find your core values is to be aware of your reaction to it when it is disregarded.
Next, we moved onto the dream part of it. The first question asked was simply: write as many dreams as you can think of in five-ish minutes.
At first it was really hard, but once I opened up the idea of it being okay to dream, I got inspired and excited. Once you let yourself dream and get past your fear of failure, you can uncover passions and dreams that you have.
Find what you love and let yourself dream. It doesn’t mean you will get exactly what you dream, because you probably won’t. Often we have a dream for our lives and when we don’t get it, we don’t know where to go. We should dream to understand ourselves, what we love, and where we can make a difference; not to make a detailed plan of how every step of our life should work.
Your dreams don’t have to look a certain way, some that I wrote down range from decorate my dorm really well, to design dresses, to become a teacher, to work in an orphanage, to learn to cook healthy, to serve in schools and churches, ect… It’s a wide range of dreams, big and small. I’m not sure what my life will look like, but I know I have passion. I know that God will be my strength when I have none, I know he will be my rock when the waters rise, I know that I want him above anything else, because in him is redemption and reconciliation.
I think dreaming is a lot like loving. When you love, you put yourself in a vulnerable place where you could get hurt; but if you never do it, you’ll never let yourself be loved. If you never dream, you never let yourself live. It may be messy, and imperfect, and not what you expect, but if it lights your soul and brings spark to your life and passion to your heart, do it!
If you never put yourself in a place where you could be hurt, you’ll never know love.
If you never put yourself in a place where you could fail, you’ll never accomplish anything.
Dare to mess up and get back up again.
Dare to dream.
P.S. I leave to live in a small village in India tomorrow!
