The New Dreamer

I've often wondered when I stopped dreaming. Not the kind that occur at night, which I have several times a week. But the kind where I envision my life somehow differently than it is now and take steps in that direction.

As an elementary school child, the sureness of numbers and equations spoke to me, as did routines. I couldn't find direct answers in literature or history, and creating things from scratch in art class, without so much as an example to go by, bewildered me. So I stuck with things with rules and a right answer that was determinable from the information I was given. Those things gave me comfort in a home life that was somewhat chaotic due to a father who battled mental illness.

Then came eighth grade. And for whatever reason, my creativity ignited. I spent hours on the weekend decorating the attendance slips for my teachers to use. I turned simple written assignments in my American history class into full-fledged projects, complete with the answers written in calligraphy on a scroll or a colonial newspaper.

But as quickly as the creative juices started flowing, they dried up. Maybe it was the increased extracurricular activities I participated in or simply the fact that I started my freshman year of high school. For whatever reason, I reverted back to straightforward school work. Yet I had a goal in mind. A goal to graduate first in my class. A goal that I pursued relentlessly, allowing myself little fun for four years until I was able to walk across the stage at graduation and give the farewell address as Valedictorian.

I moved on to college and set more academic goals. More sacrifices of fun, but another goal met. Conquered. Achieved.

Repeat the same process for grad school.

And then something happened. I realized how empty my achievements were. How they failed to define me. And how unpredictable life could be.

My body started not to cooperate.

Things I wanted to succeed at failed.

Little by little, I started to withdraw. To "numb out." I started not even asking God for things I wanted, probably for fear of disappointment after waiting and waiting for some of my prayers to not be answered with a "yes."

And now I look back and can't pinpoint when I stopped goal setting and dreaming.

But the desire to dream has been reawakened with these words from Beth Moore, "You may be one big decision away from breaking the old storyline and starting a brand new chapter of the narrative [of your life]." She also said, "We can protect ourselves right out of our calling."

That's where I've been hanging out. In the zone of self-protection. The one that convinces me to not take risks and to avoid disappointments.

But the story in Esther urges me to get out of that zone and be brave. To conquer my fears. To trust.

Yep, there's that sneaky little word again. It's only March, and it's making itself at home in my daily thoughts. As I begin to find and flex my dreaming muscle, I am sure there's going to be a direct connection to my trust muscle. I think I see some workouts are in the near future. So stay tuned for progress updates. . . .

Speechless Post

This post is brought to you by two words: Strep Throat.

Not only can I not really talk, I don't have the energy to type. I haven't battled strep throat in years, so I feel a bit off kilter. The pain is similar to when I had my tonsils removed ten years ago, and the lethargy is similar to what I experienced when I had mono fifteen years ago. But thankfully I saw the nurse practitioner this morning and started antibiotics shortly thereafter. I pray the healing's on its way!

The Name

This evening, I had the privilege of loving on a five-hour-old baby girl. Her sweet head held a full crown of dark hair. Her chubby cheeks glowed as if chapped or sunburned a ruby red hue, which garnered her the nickname "Ruby Red." We latched onto that for a while because her parents hadn't named her.

As the group of welcomers gathered, names flew through the air.

How about Georgia?
Sarah?
Ginger?
Lydia?
Isabella?

Ultimately, her parents settled on Caroline Love though we'll have to see if it sticks long enough to make it onto the birth certificate.

Names mean something. They evoke emotion. Often times, negative feelings.

Remember the name of the kid who teased you in junior high? How about the name of kid who got in trouble all the time? If you're like me, those names don't make the cut when thinking about names for your future children.

And neither do weak names. I like a name that not only sounds strong but has strong meaning. With so many requirements to fulfill, it's a wonder that any child leaves the hospital with a name.

I love that God kept it simple when Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' " (Exodus 3:13-14)

Often I try to fill in the rest of God's name for Him, e.g., "I AM Provider," or "I AM Protector." And though God fulfills all of those roles, He doesn't need more of a name to define Him. He is Who He says He is: "I AM."

So as Caroline Love begins her life on this earth, I pray that she would draw near to I AM and glorify Him with her life. If she'll live out her middle name, she won't go wrong.

Recurring Theme

I've been learning a lot lately through the studies I'm doing. And because I seem to retain concepts longer if I write about them, occasionally I'll try to summarize some of them here.

Currently, I am working through Beth Moore's new study on Esther. This past week's session focused on "meanness." One of the points that Beth Moore made was that "meanness perceives a threat." In other words, when we feel anger rising up in us for no apparent reason, it's a good time to ask, "Why do I feel threatened in this situation?"

I wish I'd had that litmus test at my fingertips when I dealt with my computer issues a few months ago. I alluded in a prior blog to the fact that my dealings with the service people were not very glorifying to God. In hindsight, I think the threat I perceived was that I was being taken advantage of--that they had taken my money to provide a service (i.e., to fix my computer) and that they weren't delivering their end of the bargain (i.e., I picked up a broken computer after a two-week wait). I also felt like I had been led astray when they sent off my computer to Tennessee twice in the span of four weeks because their advertisements make it look like they would come to my house in their little cars and fix my computer if they couldn't fix it on site.

Along the same lines, our pastor preached a few weeks ago on community and the difficulties of living in community. One of the questions he challenged us to think about when we get frustrated with others is to ask, "What am I demanding of this person? To be like me? To think like me? To act like me?" In my computer situation, I wanted them to fix my computer quickly because I needed it for work. Instead, they had their corporate procedures to follow that left me feeling like a number. I couldn't get even one of their employees to apologize for the four-week delay, for their failure to communicate with me, or for the mistakes that they made. In other words, they didn't act the way that I thought they should have, and frustration abounded.

I don't expect knowing which questions to ask myself to shield me from frustration. But I hope that they will help me get to the root of my frustration and to recognize what's really going on in my heart during those times.

Let There Be Light

The properties of light boggle my mind. How its absence alters a photograph, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. And how its absence from my life is sometimes easily noticed and other times not.

Over the past few weeks, unfortunate events battled to steal the light in my life. But in many ways, their timing couldn't have been better. For now is the time when the darkness is shrinking. The once darkening 5:30 p.m. sky stays illuminated for almost an hour more. And soon, even the 9 p.m. sky will glimmer with the remainder of the summer days' light.

Until then, I look forward to watching the days be lengthened by the light and to finding the joy therein.

Admitted Need

As I stood on the curb waiting to cross the busy four-lane intersection, the stop lights flashed red in all directions. A scenario like this makes me apprehensive when I am behind the wheel because some drivers do not see that the lights are blinking and run them, while others do not know how to navigate the intersection as a four-way stop. Considering that I was on foot, this situation caused even more trepidation.

After watching the intersection, I noticed that most of the drivers saw that the lights were flashing red and that they checked to see if there was any traffic coming from the side street. But because the side street had almost no traffic, the drivers stopped only momentarily. And not one of them noticed that I was standing on the curb waiting to make my way across all four lanes.

I wondered if I would have to wait until the rush-hour traffic subsided before I could cross the street. As I considered going back in to work for a bit, I looked up and saw a uniformed officer approaching.

As the officer came closer, I asked if he would help me cross the street, and he obliged. The four lanes of traffic respected his authority and let us cross without incident.

It seemed absurd that I, at age thirty-four, needed to ask for help crossing the street. Yet it was so much easier, not to mention safer, to be guided across the intersection by a uniformed officer than if I had tried to do it on my own.

I wonder how many times has God wanted to help me and patiently waited for me to ask, only to see me try a task on my own because I won't put my pride aside. This little instance of admitting my need and watching it be so easily fulfilled has spoken volumes to me about how much more I need to depend on God instead of myself.

Test for Truth

I'm one of those crazy people who actually enjoyed summer school. I loved the fact that my fall and spring course loads were lighter because of the classes I took during the summer. And, for the most part, it seemed that the professors went a bit easier on students during the summer. With the exception of one particular professor.

During the summer of 1998, I signed up to take a class that I knew would have a fifty question true-false final exam. That scared me. I prefer short answer and essay exams because you can demonstrate that you know something and hopefully earn some credit even if the answer is not exactly on point. So, I went into the class knowing I was doomed. But little did I know exactly how much.

When the exam day arrived, I went in as prepared as I could be and walked out thinking that the test was not as bad as I had expected. Unfortunately, I should have prepared myself for the worst because my grade in that class was the lowest grade I ever made.

After the shock wore off, I went to talk to the professor about the exam. I noticed that many of the questions that I had missed I had marked as false. I thought through the questions and could not understand why that was not the correct answer. So I read one question to my professor and listed several scenarios that showed why I thought the correct answer should have been false. His reply, "Well, it's still mostly true." I never was able to pin him down on how many scenarios I would have to come up with to make a statement false. I had always been under the impression that just one would do the trick.

Much to this essay girl's chagrin, life seems full of true-false tests, many of which we aren't blatantly aware of. But thankfully, the test for truth is much easier than the exam I suffered through in summer school. By using the gift of God's Word to test everything that we read and hear, there's no need to count how many scenarios make something false; it either aligns with the Truth of God's Word or it doesn't. So it's as if we have the answer key at our disposal 24/7.

That's one simple test I'm willing to apply. How about you?