Documenting What You’ve Dreamed

If you were to go back through my journals, one thing you’d see me writing about consistently would be the idea of traveling. I have this sort of vagabond spirit inside of me that I can’t quite figure out. I feel like the more I see and experience the better understanding I will get of God. God is certainly much bigger than my scope of Him. Putting myself outside of what is comfortable always seems to usher in a new found passion and adoration for God. “Wow, so you’re even bigger?!”

I love the mystery of Him and the adventure that seems to conjure up inside me.

My longing to travel is a longing for a change of my normal pace, a change of the normal people I see, a change of the normal food I eat, the normal smells I smell, the normal feelings I feel. My longing to travel is a longing to have my “normals” shook up.

So here we are a week out from traveling to California for a two-week vacation, something that should be a dream come true, and I am stressing out. You know how gearing up for travel can be. I have to pack and stop the mail and let people know we won’t be where we regularly are. I have to think about things like food spoiling, bills getting paid on time, lodging, vacation activities, etc. If I’m not careful, this could turn into an ugly tailspin, as my shoulders and neck begin to tighten and my voice becomes short and tense.

So I stop. I say, “This is not going down like this God. I’ve dreamed for travel. I’m getting to travel. I’ve dreamed for having my normals shook up. This is shaking my normals up. I am going to enjoy this.”

I sense Him leading me to read old journals. To find old dream lists. To recall my heart’s desires. To see old prayers. I realize that not only was it scary to write those dreams down (for fear they may never happen), it is even more scary to have the dreams finally happen. Now they are staring me down, breathing down my neck. What if I don’t have what it takes to live out my own dreams? What if I’m not cut out for traveling with a family of four kids afterall? What about all the stinkin’ details that I didn’t think about when I was dreaming?

I am reminded of Phil 1:6 There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

God started those dreams in me and God will help me finish those dreams. He does not invite us into things that He will not also help us finish. He helps us take baby steps. Each little step gets us closer to that bigger dream that He instilled in us. And we keep right on after it until the end of our life.

I’m so thankful I have my dreams documented. I can’t escape them and I can’t shrink back when they finally start to come true. I’m praying through this California travel. I’m believing it is all that I once dreamed it would be. I can hardly wait to see what God teaches me through this and how much more full my life will feel as I enter in.