Stepping Stones to Our Dreams

Being one who likes to think a lot about my dreams and my future, I enjoyed this great post by my friend Sam. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve found that looking ahead as a futurist or a strategist never led me down the pathway I envisioned. In hindsight, my vision for the future was always rather myopic and shortsighted… Mainly because of unforeseen variables that changed the course of my life. It was like I was trying to paint the picture of my future using a color palette that was ever-changing. Allowing my present situation to cloud my destiny.

And then a little later in the post he poses this question:

Have you given your dreams to God, allowing him to stow them away for future use?

I truly believe that God gives us passions and desires and dreams intentionally. That He created us to chase after and to enjoy them. However, what I do often forget, and what I was so clearly reminded of in Sam’s post, is that we can’t work out all the details in the present. We can point ourselves in the direction of those dreams, but we cannot be so foolish as to believe that how we think we’ll get there is how we’ll actually get there.

I like being reminded of this for two reasons:

1. I can only take the very next step on my journey. Not steps 10, 11, 12 or even step 101. What a great reminder because in my mind, I’m constantly thinking about step 101. Sometimes so much so that I don’t have the energy or the focus to do the step 1 that I need to do today. What’s crazy is that by the time I get to step 101, it will look TOTALLY DIFFERENT then what I think it’s going to look like. It could even be that I won’t have to get to step 101 of my dream because God will pave an entirely new way that gets me to my dream by step 50. Or, maybe God knows I need to go the round about way, because I need to walk through step 200, 201 and 202 to better prepare me for my dream. It’s all about trusting His vision over mine. It’s faith. Right?

2. I start to recognize and get excited about the little steps of my todays. Suddenly the seemingly little and pointless steps can become great reasons to celebrate because I know it’s all a part of His plan. I remember thinking about this in regards to a sewing project I was working on. I was stuck on something I had designed and had pretty much given up on an idea working. I put the project aside. We had friends visiting and I just happened to ask my friend Christina’s advice on the project I was working on. She answered my question exactly and took me to the next level of my sewing. One little conversation catapulted me weeks ahead in my sewing skills. Such a small step, but in the long run I can now see how their visit took me to the next level in my artistic confidence and skill.

When we start looking for the little steps in our todays, I think we’ll start to see them more and more. We’ll start to trust God with the dreams of our future and focus on what He needs us to do today so that He can take us where He wants us to go. He’s helping us to weave a brilliant tapestry, but it can be so difficult to just focus on one thread at a time.

I could list for you many examples of seeing God take my dreams or the dreams of my husband and make them come to be along a much different path then we had imagined. But the dreams are still intact on the other side and we are a thousand times better positioned to live them out then our plans would have allowed.

Have you seen God use small stepping stones in your life to bring about your dreams? Do you think God can be trusted with the details of your life?