Welcome to the end of blog month! For my last post of April, I wanted to write about something that’s been on my heart for a while now. It’s a lot of what I wish I knew at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. That feels ridiculous for me to say, considering I’m not even twenty-one yet. But God has literally not stopped teaching me (more accurately: knocking me off my feet and smacking me in the face with His truth) for a single second of the last few years. How humbling to know that though I foolishly feel like I’ve learned enough to fill a lifetime, I am still SO very young and have so much more to learn.
When I was sixteen, I felt like I could do anything in the world. I think most people would look back at their younger selves and say the same thing. I had no limits on my dreams, no one telling me what I could or couldn’t do. I had a fire in my bones for the Lord, and asked Him everyday how I could use it as an adult. I was scared for the future, for what my life would look like after high school, but not quite enough to make me less excited for it.
But then something happened: I got a little older. When I was seventeen, I felt the Lord tell me for the first time not to go to college immediately after high school. Suddenly, my once wide open future felt smaller. I began to look at my life through a funnel, a very distinct line between what is possible for a simple high school graduate and what was no longer an option. But I never once asked the Lord to restore the dreams I once held. I looked at my skewed future and told myself what once was a limitless cloud of possibility, was now a two foot tall glass ceiling. I grew frustrated with God. He told me not to go to college, and to instead move to Memphis with my parents. But that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I began to think He must not want me to continue my education because I’m not good enough. He must not be able to use me. I told myself if I’m no use even to furthering the kingdom, then I must have no purpose at all. These are lies I now find ridiculous. But this toxic pattern of thinking was my reality for years. It’s no surprise I soon began to plan my future on my own terms. I stopped asking God where and how He wanted to use me, and began asking myself instead.
When was the age you stopped dreaming big? At seventeen, I lost all of my childlike faith in the world. I told myself I was just growing up. But since when did growing up also mean you stop dreaming? When did adulthood become the place where we put God in a box and suddenly call ourselves the judges for what’s possible?
I started journaling when I was fourteen. It started out just as an outlet for my angsty teenage thoughts and feelings, but it quickly became my favorite way to talk to God. I began writing my prayers instead of saying them out loud. Reading back through my old journals from high school, there are definitely common themes. I constantly told the Lord the biggest desire on my heart: for Him to use me, to call me somewhere or to something. I had no specifics on how, where, or when. I just asked that He would use me to reach anyone who doesn’t know Him. I can’t help but get goosebumps now when I read those words. If I could go back in time to any age, it would be the very first time I prayed that unknown prayer. I would tell myself about how hard the next few years will be, about how I will eventually lose my worth and joy in the Lord, about how I will one day, against all odds, find it once again. I would blow my own mind by telling myself that every dream in my heart will one day come true, all in God’s perfect timing that far surpasses my own understanding.
The World Race is beyond what I could even dream at fourteen, or sixteen, even nineteen years old. In this last year of my life, God has restored that same childlike faith that I can do anything in the world. I’ve already watched Him do the impossible with my life and my heart.
No matter where you are in life now, I would encourage anyone and everyone to go back to the age where you stopped dreaming big. Listen to your favorite albums from that time, reread what made you think at that age. Remind yourself of what it felt like to be young and naive, when the sky was the limit for your future. Ask the Lord to restore that lost, crucial quality of dreaming big. Ask Him to do what you think is impossible.
One of my favorite songs these days is by John Mark McMillan, called “Enemy, love.” The lyrics from this song were the prayer on my heart that eventually led me to the World Race:
“I’m willing, but I’m weak
So come and talk to me
I don’t want to be, want to be, want to be
Your enemy, love”
Are you the enemy standing in the way of God’s plan for your life? Are you holding your own self back from achieving the dreams you had at sixteen?
Thank you so much to those who have followed me along through blog month! The Lord has completely overwhelmed me with love and support these last few weeks. I am so thankful.
