dream.

I haven't appreciated the idea of dreaming until recently. And I don't mean the kind of dreaming in the wee hours of the night, where our mind shuts down and our subconscious comes to life, creating the most bizarre of stories. I mean the voluntary dreaming where you allow your mind to tap into the deepest parts of your soul, to take all those desires, wants, wishes, hopes, prayers - and turn them into dreams.

My big-hearted, red headed friend in Costa Rica taught me how to dream big. She taught me how dreaming big in the Young Life ministry is a necessity - how there is no goal too lofty, no high school friend unreachable, no Young Life club too complicated that cannot be completed with God's steady Hands of grace hands guiding you.

My compassionate, Costa Rican mom taught me how to dream big. She taught me the freedom in dreaming dreams may never come true - how to not let the disappointment of an unmet dream stop me from pursuing others and how Jesus is always there to catch your tears if you are met with an impossible dream.

My always gracious, wide-eyed best friend taught me how to dream big. She taught me to not hide even the smallest of dreams that I tended to tuck away in my heart - how God cares about all dreams { big, small, silly, serious, possible, impossible } and to live in these dreams instead of choosing to lock them behind the unfortified walls of my soul.

I'm learning to dream and I want to live in those dreams. To not be afraid of dreaming the impossible - to be okay when some of those dreams never come true. And learn to live fully and in the moment and enter the presence of Jesus in the here & now - to live small dreams and big dreams and to never let the dreaming stop. 

Because I am being more and more convinced that it is in the unfiltered dreaming that we experience a piece of God that we cannot experience when we live in fear of the unmet dream.

"I stop dreaming sometimes, because I'm afraid of what it would take to change my life. I stop dreaming because I'm afraid of the chaos that a dream might bring, afraid of what a new dream will require of me. I practice being fine, and I tell myself that things are all right, just as they are. They are all right, of course. But that night....I dreamed. And it could have been the beauty of the moon on the water, or it could have been the freshness of the sea air, but when I returned home, I felt new, and that the world was bright and new, and I heard God's voice whispering to me everywhere I went. It could have been anything, but I think it was the dreaming." - Shauna Niequist