Plato writes in Phaedrus about a charioteer who tries to fly his winged horses to the heavens where he was meant to soar. Unfortunately, one of his horses is unruly so he always falls back to the ground. He tries over and over again, leading to the same results, never reaching the heavens. The charioteer learns to fear his dreams of soaring to the heavens because of the pain it brings when those dreams have been broken time and time again. The problem is that the charioteer forgets he was made to reach the heavens.
I was fighting the other day with God. It isn’t often that I’m angry. I hate how I feel and, I never know what to do with those feelings. In many ways I think I’ve played the “good girl” in hopes that that is what gets my chariot to reach the heavens. That God will then make all my dreams come true because I’ve been so good. I’ve watched the same chariots fall sharply to the ground again and again despite my so called “goodness”.
The problem is that I’m tired of my dreams. In fact, I’m angry with them. I’d like to shoot them down from even attempting to fly for fear of the heartache that always follows when they do not live up to my expectations. So then I blame God.
I was faced recently with one thing I’ve never wanted within my grasp and one thing I wanted completely out of my reach. I felt so defeated. And so I was angry with God. I started feeling that He has given me many things I’ve never wanted.
But I read some encouragement in Katie Davis’s book, Kisses from Katie, in her struggle with her dreams aligning with God’s in regards to her calling to minister to women and children in Uganda.
“Today I am living the desires of my heart and I cannot imagine being happier; I cannot imagine living any other life than the one that unfolds before me day by day. But believe me, I am by no means living my plan. I thought that I wanted to go to college with my high school boyfriend, get married, have a successful career and children, settle into a nice house down the road from my parents, an live happily ever after. Today I am a single woman raising a houseful of girls and trying to teach others the love of Jesus in a land that is a far cry from hometown and my culture. This is not a life that I dreamed up on my own or even knew I desired. I am watching God work, and as I “delight myself in the Lord” by doing what He asks of me and by saying yes to the needs He places in front of me, He is changing the desires of my heart and aligning them with the desires of His. As I go with Him to the hard places, He changes them into the most joyful places I could imagine.”
Plato’s picture of his winged horses, one black, one white, making dreams of flying to the heavens practically impossible, leaves the charioteer despairing and hopeless. For he knows he was meant for the heavens, but that one thing he’s always wanted is always out of reach. He chooses to stay on the ground, the thing within his grasp, but never wanted.
So why is it that I make it a fight between me and God to reach the heavens? I don’t think He meant for a fight just so that we learn to live a life of complacency on the ground. He wants to share in our dreams.
But that might mean something very different from what I’m looking for. That’s why I’m angry.
As encouraging as Katie's words were to me, I also wanted to throw the book up against the wall. As equally as I feel a yearning to let go of my own desires and be used by God, I am afraid of letting go of my own comfort and happiness I find in my own dreams.
He will give me grace even still in my frustration.
I want to keep dreaming. No more shooting them down. But I want God to shape those dreams to be His as painful as that may be. Then those inconsistent angel things, my dreams, will let me soar to the heavens right where I was made to be.
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, plans to give you a future and a hope. Jer 29:11
For it God who is at work in you, to will and work for His good pleasure. Phil 2:13
*We Have Forgotten – Sixpence None the Richer – A song that I used to think about often on dreaming.
