Waiting it Out - Part 1 - Change of View

I had a dream two nights ago - one of those dreams that troubles you, answers questions and pushes (or lurches) you forward all at the same time.


In the dream I was pregnant, but the baby wasn't fully developed yet. If I put my hands on my stomach I could sort of see the form the baby was taking. This baby was small, but growing. Then, in the dream, I started to lose her. I knew that she stopped growing and I wouldn't give birth to a live, healthy, child, but that the life of this baby had abruptly ended.


I awoke knowing that I could have done something about her life. This wasn't the way it was intended to be.


I believe dreams about babies often represent what we want to come to fruition in our lives. Our callings and hopes and dreams and ministries are all represented. My "baby" was just starting out, but my decisions to not take care caused me to lose her. As I pondered the things I desire to see happen in my lifetime in conjunction with my current actions, I knew that I was not being intentional enough with my time. I fight the urge, even now, to justify myself and pat myself on the back, but the truth is, I forsake some of the very tools I know are imparitive for "success". I had to take time, again, to remind myself what the vision is and what my personal goals are. I had to write out, again, what I want to offer in sacrifice and thanksgiving for the time I have to be part of this world.


Here are my two biggest goals: 1. To know God. I believe he is knowable to the extent my mind and spirit will travel in this lifetime. Never fully understandable, because I wouldn't want to serve a God as finite as myself, but searchable. When I stand before him at the end of my life I want it to be a reunion of familiar friends- or better, a final merging of two parts that had been inching closer and closer to each other since the beginning of time. 2. To communicate depth faithfully and powerfully. I want to challenge people in the way they think and inspire them to engage and go deeper with the words I write or speak. I don't want my thoughts and offerings to be weightless.


Reminding myself of these things, I realized that I had fallen asleep without taking care to make sure the growth of my "baby" was my first priority. Like cutting off the supply of nourishment to a growing fetus, or denying a living being oxygen, I had begun to operate as if I didn't have to be intentional with my decisions. I had taken my eyes off of the future in exchange for an assumption that said "it will all just work out . . .like magic". Well, I don't want to be at the whim of something magical. That seems too flipant to me.





"If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would do nothing forever and ever. There are unemployables in the spiritual domain, spiritually decrepit people, who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not. One of the great snares of the Christian worker is to make a fetish out of his rare moments. . .if you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments."


April 25, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers





I have just once to offer this moment to the world. I will never be able to do it again. I want to be able to decide fully and intentionally what I do with it, so as not to waste and squander. This doesn't mean I lock myself in a convent and stop sleeping in exchange for prayer and fasting. It does mean that I stop doing things mindlessly. I stop having mindless conversations with people that are reaching out for hope. I stop gazing inward so much. I stop spending the majority of my time doing things that are fruitless. I stop satisfying temperal desires instead of eternal hungers.