My life has been pretty “normal” up to this point. I have essentially done all of the things that a young person in the United States is supposed to do. I was involved in 25 different things in middle school and high school. I graduated from high school in 2013, I went to a four year college, got the college experience by living on campus all four years, graduated from Cedarville in 2017, and got a job within six months of graduation. I looked like your normal twenty-something getting settled into adult life.
When you grow up in the United States – or even when you don’t – you have this idea instilled in you that you want to live a certain kind of life. We all have goals for our life, but many times, there is this certain type of life that we strive for: The American Dream.
The American Dream: the cute house, the white picket fence, the family of four with the golden retriever running around in the back yard, the well paying job.
While this might not be the dictionary definition of the American Dream, many people picture something similar to this. We all have a picture of what the American Dream looks like. The idea of living the American Dream becomes ingrained in us from when we are young. People immigrate to the United States in search of their idea of the American Dream.
I can’t say that I haven’t held onto the American Dream at some point in my life. I have every desire to get married and have kids, but the Lord has truly changed what that looks like to me because I was holding onto my picture of it instead of His.
By the world’s standards, comfort and control are something we should strive for – they are part of this Dream or lifestyle that we all work for. The world defines comfort as a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. That’s what we strive for in the American Dream. We want to live in homes with comfortable beds, where the temperature is always set at 72 degrees and no one ever stretches us past what is normal and comfortable. Get up, take the kids to school, work 9-5, run the kids to their 67 different activities and repeat. Go to church on Sunday (when the kids aren’t playing sports) and maybe Bible Study every so often because it is something that we probably should do, and we want our kids to do too.
We want to have control over our lives and what is going on around us. If you look up what it truly means to have control, the definition is the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events. It makes us nervous when we don’t get to choose the direction that the changes in our life occur though. But why?
Are we afraid someone else will make a decision we won’t like? Or is it that things won’t be done exactly how we would have done them? Or do we not like having help from other people? (I had to give up some control at training camp because I realized that it’s okay to ask for help, and that people were willing to help.) Or are we just too afraid to let go of our pride? Are we holding onto fear that is keeping us from experiencing the life God has for us? That life doesn’t always look like the American Dream.
In doing the World Race, I was letting go of some of the American Dream. I am letting go of getting a full-time job, buying a house and getting a dog – all of which I have watched my friends do in the year and a half since we graduated. These are all things I want, but after graduation, I knew I wasn’t ready for. I am putting a lot of things on hold for the Gospel and I could not be more excited about it.
But I was still holding onto something that deep down I didn’t want to let go of and I didn’t realize it until I got to Atlanta for Training Camp.
When I was going into Training Camp, I was super nervous about what to expect. I knew I wouldn’t have problems getting to know the people, but I was anxious about the events of Camp. I didn’t have any idea when the fitness hike would be, or when “the airport would lose half of our bags” and we would have to share. Would I have enough with me to be prepared to share a tent with someone that I barely knew? Little did I know that God had already prepared me for these things and I have more of an ability to go with the flow than I thought I did.
What I didn’t know going into Camp was that God was going to break down some walls in me that I didn’t even know were there. Every day, we had two worship sessions that each lasted an hour, and during one of our first worship sessions, and continually after, we were asked to surrender ourselves to God, or surrender something specific to Him when He brought it up. During one of our first worship sessions, the Lord brought up how I was holding on to the desire to date and get married. While this isn’t a bad desire, I was clinging too tightly and throughout the first week, God made that very clear to me. I was okay with giving up most of the American Dream, but I wasn’t okay with this part.
We made it through the first four days of Camp, and Friday was Girls Day. We spent the entire morning talking about shame, and how important it is to let go of that. Freedom is beautiful, but can only be found when we let go of the shame and cling to God.
By late morning, we had time to spend with God, however that looked, and He made it very clear that I was holding onto shame over how deeply I wanted to be in a relationship. As I spent time with Him that morning, I began to let go of that shame. And I began to let go of the desire that was deep down inside of me. It was painful to let go of, but it is freeing to not hold onto it anymore. By the time I left Training Camp, I had never felt so free from this desire!
Friends, wanting parts or all of the American Dream isn’t necessarily bad, but be willing to use it for the glory of the Most High King!
Do I still want to get married one day? Yes, but that isn’t what I am letting rule my life! I am excited to focus on the King!
