Dreams have been on my mind a lot of late. I do not mean what I’ve been dreaming at night, but the kind of dreams that represent the life I want to live.
Following dreams is hard work. It feels like it requires constantly looking around you to gather your bearings to make sure you are actually on the path you want to be on. It feels so easy to follow after the lure of an easier road in life, a road with a destination nowhere near where you ever dreamed you would end up.
A few nights ago Jenny and I found ourselves sitting under a street lamp in front of our house at two in the morning. We were sitting on the asphalt, the air still humid and sticky despite the late hour, talking with a couple we know, and two guys we had never met before. It was perhaps the most brutally honest conversation I have ever been a part of (although they did most of the talking).
One guy bared his soul. Now in his thirties, he recounted his story. In high school he had been quite the football player. He was a Christian, and even went on a mission trip to Mexico. On this trip, he had a pivotal moment in his life. Something happened. He was handing out prescription glasses to people who never knew what glasses were. An old man approached him, someone whose vision was extremely impaired without correction. When they found the right strength of glasses for the old man, this guy witnessed the old man’s transformation and his pure joy of being able to see for the first time in years. Maybe he had forgotten what life was like with good vision. But the old man went away elated.
This guy, now standing under a dim streetlight in Florida, talked about how at that moment he knew this was the life he was meant for. He wanted to help people. He wanted to be a missionary. This all star football player was a kind hearted teddy bear. And he had a dream. He had glimpsed what his life could be like if he followed his dream.
Fifteen years later, his life has taken a different turn. He has a very respectable job no doubt. And he is great at what he does. But he always looks back at what could have been. Life has been a series of disillusionments since he decided against following what he knew to be his dreams for the sake of what seemed normal. He gave up his dreams for a career that really never inspired him in the first place. Since he walked away from his dream, his life melted into something almost unrecognizable even to himself.
I have dreams. Jenny and I have dreams of the life we want to life together. And it seems like most every day, the world around us is trying to bump us off that path in order to follow something less dangerous, and ultimately, less fulfilling. And it seems as though life requires Jenny and I to gather our bearings together nearly every single day to hold each other to the path of our dreams. Its not easy. Our society seems to only applaud dreamers after they have “made it,” and then only if it falls into society’s standards of “making it.” Meanwhile, the world scoffs at those who are in the middle of following a conviction or a dream by laughing at their naivity, or telling them something about how “the real world” works.
My dream? I want to be a story teller. I want to be a photographer and a writer. I want to travel the world. I want to never stop exploring. I want my life to always be an adventure. I want my life to glorify God.
So I ask you the same question Jesus asked the lame man waiting by the pool, “What do you want?”
