growing up i could never fully answer the breakfast table question: What was your dream last night? not because i couldn’t remember, but because they tend to be unexplainable. or at least too confusing for myself to put in order. so i sometimes would settle with sharing a chunk or two. maybe a single scene in my head or a part that lasted at most 2 minutes.
my dreams are fast paced. one moment ill be one place with a some people doing whatever is going on, and then as i turn my body a slightest degree or blink my eyes everything changes. suddenly im somewhere else, maybe another dimension, maybe another decade or century. suddenly new characters in my dream are doing something else like everything is normal. and it is normal. it’s how my mind has always worked when i lay my head down. i go through 10-15 different “lives” every night. while i cant fully remember all of them, there are certain things that will stand out in each one. there are lives that my mind can still reach back into as far back as when i was 7 years old, but i cant force myself to pull them out.
real vulnerability time; when i signed up for the World Race i didn’t have much of a relationship with God. in fact there were weeks just a month before when i didn’t believe in Him at all. all i wanted was an adventure. oh yeah, and the thought of going to college made me nauseous at the time. so there was definitely some doubt that maybe this wasn’t what i was supposed to be doing; wondering “what if I had the faith I have now last year? would this have been the road I walked down with the Lord?”
some people have deja vu… i can see my old dreams.
twice in cambodia, once in honduras, and already twice in guatemala i’ve been thrown back into my fast flashes of lives. as i walked into our hostel that we stayed at in debrief i instantly knew i had been there before, but in my dream from middle school. there i was in the courtyard with a heavy load on my back, surrounded by people i just met back in July. but i’d seen their faces 6 years ago. it felt like deja vu, but there was something deeper to it. thinking it was just a cool kinda thing, brushed it aside and went on with the week.
a couple days ago the Lord and I had a real hard conversation about what 2018 is going to look like, once again, in my hammock (that hammie has genuinely seen every part of my soul). talking about the future, my brain flashed with some of the most vivid visions i’ve ever had. not of my old dreams, but of imagery of what is to come in this year. that day i took a good ol’ chicken bus (old school bus made into public transport stuffed past the brim with as many people as possible). we were going to a thrift store in Chimal. casual. minding my business as the bus rocked us back and forth around sharp turns. then it came, the dream. the strongest one i have ever had. i had been on that bus when i was 7 years old. the lighting came in the windows the exact same way. my body lurched as the driver hit the brakes too hard, the exact same way. people were in the same seats. the hunger for dinner was the same feeling in my stomach. same excitement to find a new cozy flannel or sweatshirt for these winter nights. and then i remembered, that dream had something else. there was something floating in space in the aisle, just in my reach. but in my dream i didnt reach out, i stared hypnotized by it. that object given to me as a 7 year old living in Indiana in my dream was the exact same as what i had seen sitting in my hammock as an 18 year old living in guatemala.
this is where i am supposed to be. i didnt know when i was a kid, but God knew from before the land outside my temporary home erupted into a volcano. God knew i was going to turn away from him as a senior in high school. and he still took care of my path so that a year later i know every mistake can be turned into something for HIS glory. each day is a gift from the Lord, he took the time to specially plan it out longer ago than you can imagine. and it hasn’t gone forgotten. He is still with you as He carries it out. to know where we belong it isn’t enough to have an intention of following, but our direction needs to be facing His path.
“it’s direction, not intention, that determines the destination.” – andy stanley
“Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” John 12: 25&26
