Awakening dreams

Fear is a powerful emotion. It keeps us from trying new things or having that hard conversation or stepping out of our comfort zone.  I felt overwhelming fear when I made the decision to start writing.  I would think about writing, my heart would start to race and then I couldn’t bring myself to type the words.  The moment I decided I wanted to use my voice, I mutually felt like I had nothing worth saying. 

Although, writing isn’t trying something brand new for me. It’s more like awakening an old love.  

A look back

My love of writing traces back to my childhood.  I remember writing multiple Haiku poems after learning that particular poetry style by my 3rd grade teacher.  In middle school, I wrote a paragraph for a writing contest that landed me a prize: to spend the day shadowing a Kansas State Senator.  Through my high school years, I wrote numerous short stories in a creative writing class and even started to outline a fiction, romance novel. (I know. I blame it on the shelves of Danielle Steele novels that I was obsessed with at that time.)  When I wasn’t writing, my face was often in a book. It was typical for me to be reading late into the night with a flashlight when it was well past the time I should have been asleep!   By my senior year, my dreams of writing dwindled as I looked at more practical options for college and a career.

College became a season of writing from the heart.  My freshman year, email launched on our campus and “letter” writing became my main means of connecting with friends on other campuses.  The “ding” of an email when you would log in in to your account was thrilling!  Mass communication and advertising emails didn’t exist yet so that “ding” signaled a letter from someone that you cared about.  From boyfriends to best friends, I loved the modern letter-writing format of email.  In the middle of that college experience, I also had an encounter with the living God that would leave me forever changed.  Receiving His love and grace marked a transformation in my life and also a transformed way of writing: journaling.

Journaling

Honestly, I don’t remember the first journal that I wrote.  It was something along the lines of a prayer journal where I would pen specific prayer requests for those I loved and myself.  Simple prayers. Almost more of a list than a flow of words, sentences and paragraphs.  But as my prayer life with Jesus grew, so did my journaling.  I started to write more from the depths of my heart.  My journal became a safe place for confessing my hurts, processing the desires of my heart, and even crying out to God to move in ways that didn’t seem possible.  It was a place of fully adoring Jesus.  Scribbles of gratitude.  And my own brokenness revealed.

I have countless journals that I’ve filled over the years with my prayers, thoughts, hopes, fears, frustrations, wonderings, revelations, and truths. Those pages contained prayers for my husband before we ever met and my children before they ever were held in my arms. Journals are the still the place where I encounter God.  He hears my heart and I hear His voice.  All through the beauty of words.

Who are you?

I read Jo Saxton’s book, The Dream of You, a few years ago. She challenged what I believed about and how I was living into my God-given identity. Early in the book she posed this question,

“What was the dream you had of yourself from the very beginning? Before life interrupted, before anyone told you who you were allowed to be?”

That question initiated a look back over what I loved as a child. What had a dreamed about becoming from the time I was a young girl? What had I really loved all my life? Words, books, lyrics, and writing.  It’s all part of how the Creator made me. Somewhere in the transition to adulthood, I no longer believed I could be a writer.  Maybe I remembered too many defeating comments spoken over me.  My own insecurities limited me from thinking beyond the journal.  Possibly, no one ever encouraged me to keep pursuing the love for writing.  There’s power in words: to propel you forward or hold you back. Sometimes the result of what has been spoken over you lands you far from the place that you thought you would actually be. That searching helped me to reclaim writing as part of how He made me.

“our sense of identity is shaped by far more than childhood dreams. Some of us were given inaccurate identities when life interrupted and distracted us. The people around us have left their mark. And personal experiences don’t remain in the past. They leave a deep imprint, forever changing us.” -Jo Saxton

Go back to go forward

So, here I am, stepping out of fear and into my God-given identity.  Writing outside of the journal and taking that small step forward into the dream that’s been lying dormant in my heart.  Does that sound familiar?  Do you have an old dream that needs to be awakened?  Do you have something stirring in you and fear is holding you back?  Have there been lies spoken over you that you believed to be true? Or you walked down a different road than you thought you would? Let me encourage you.  Let’s be brave together!  Take a walk back to your childhood and uncover the things that you abandoned into adulthood.   Throw off that paralyzing fear and embrace an old-love.  You could find yourself in the place you were supposed to be all along.  God has a way of bringing us back to the path that He had laid out for us even when we wandered away. 

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. (Ephesians 1:11–12, MSG)