On the race we talk a lot about dreams. I’ve met some of the biggest and wildest dreamers over the past ten months. And let me tell you, The Lord has put some incredible dreams in the hearts of my teammates, my squad mates and so many of the incredible people I’ve met along the way. Big, beautiful dreams of how they want to bring heaven to earth.
But for a long time I didn’t have a multitude of dreams or even one grand dream. For a long time I secretly believed I was missing something. That my lack of imagination might be holding me back from all of the possibilities God has created in the world. I began to be so frustrated that I didn’t have these crazy dreams and big ideas that I saw being cultivated in my squad mates. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong, what aspect of God I wasn’t tapping into.
But that wasn’t it at all.
I didn’t realize it until the words were coming out of my mouth. I was telling friends how badly I wanted to have a cause, a passion, something specific at which to direct my energy. Helping people was too general. Helping people was too vague to set this apparent non-dreamer in motion. So I began to ask God for a passion, a direction to run hard after.
I told Him if he showed me what he’d created me for, why I had this crazy hodge podge of skills (you don’t find many CPAs with a masters in higher ed), I’d run tirelessly in that direction. I’d fight for the cause or the people he put in my heart.
And God showed up. He showed me that I don’t have to be a dreamer to believe He can do big things; to believe He is a God of the unimaginable. I just need to believe HIM.
As I believed God, slowly but surely over the next couple months, He revealed to me my fight, my direction. Poverty.
As I have traveled the world, I’ve encountered poverty unlike anything I have ever seen before. I’ve seen and lived in conditions I could have never fully understood without first hand knowledge. Yet in spite of this what I remember about all of these places are the people I’ve met.
People with amazing strength, with passion and fervor for their communities. These two things have changed the way I think about poverty as a whole and about the people who live in impoverished communities. I no longer just see what isn’t there. I see the possibility of what could be. I see the potential for growth. How small amounts of help and encouragement can make their dreams a reality. Because trust me, in every place I’ve been the people have dreams of their own just like my squad mates. And I want to fight alongside them.
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In this journey, God didn’t just show me my direction, my passion. He showed me that when I was asking for big dreams, I was asking for them because that’s what I thought I should do, deep down I thought as a Racer I SHOULD be a dreamer. And for that reason he chose not to speak to me about dreams. He showed me I had been asking the wrong question and all of my frustration brought me around to the right question–for me it wasn’t about dreams.
It was about asking for passion. Asking for the thing God had hidden deep within my heart that makes me come alive and then finding a person or organization that is passionate about the same things and who can use my skills. Because truth be told–I’m not a dreamer.
There I said it. I’m not a dreamer. I never have been.
I’m an implementer, a doer. I love to make things happen. But I’m a doer that loves dreamers.
I love the way they can create a whole new world of possibilities out of thin air.
The Race hasn’t taught me to dream big. It’s taught me that I’ve been given the skills and the compassion to work to make others’ big dreams come true.
It would be easy for some to say that I’m short changing myself, that really I am a dreamer trapped in a doer but if you feel this way, you’ve missed my point.
Because as much as poverty is my passion, I want to fight poverty by serving others’ dreams. I want to take the dreams of the people I am so lucky to know and use my skills to put them in motion.
I can confidently say that it would be my greatest joy to spend my life partnering to make the dreams of others come true. Making dreams come true and changing the world while we do it.
I don’t have this all figured out (I have that in common with my dreamer friends), I know I have so much to learn to be able to successfully help others but I’m excited to get started. I’m excited to see what happens. I’m excited to run hard in the fight against poverty.
I’m excited to make even wild dreams come true.
