Find Your Dream

We have the most amazing tree. It’s a giant Weeping Willow that takes up the whole backyard of a little house we own in town. It towers over the little 650 sq ft house, standing guard over the property. The branches grow way down to the ground creating a little house inside its canopy.

When I get tired working on the house we are renovating (see August 8 post) I just go back and take a look at the tree. I can just picture what this little house will look like when it is all finished—peaceful and serene with the house flowing naturally into the backyard with this beautiful tree where one can sit on a bench and breathe in the peace and happiness there.

Yesterday after pulling up carpet and padding I discovered wood flooring that had been painted over. Now I have something else to add to my imagination—gleaming, beautiful, shiny, wood floors. I also have something else to add to my to-do list!

This project has totally captured my imagination and now I am having a hard time falling asleep at night. Images of what it will look like when completed, pictures of people meeting there to grow, learn, and share, and thoughts of how to best complete the project fill my mind. It is amazing how much power a dream or vision of the future can hold.

Dreams. What dream do you have for your life? What vision of the future do you see for yourself, your family, and our world? Sadly, many of us have forgotten how to dream. Yet it is vital to the health of our future to reclaim our dreams and recapture our imagination.

Tragedy, divorce, death, and loss can more than dampen our dreams. When you hold a dream in your heart and it doesn’t work out the way you imagined it, it feels devastating. It is tempting to give up dreaming altogether. But what is the alternative? To live a future filled with a dull expectation of another tragedy? To give away the power of your imagination to darkness? To live with a constant dread of the future? It is in our dreams—our vision of the future—that we are inspired towards a beautiful life.

One of the most important things we can do after experiencing loss is to take an inventory of our dreams. If we have placed all of our dreams in one basket, so to speak, and that basket is dropped, what do we have left?

What we discover is that too often we have believed that we can’t live without one particular thing or person. We are certain that life is of no value without our home, or a spouse, or even a child. As valuable and even as precious as these are, nothing can take the place of our own soul. Our own unique gifts and contributions to the world are of inestimable value and we have a responsibility to become who we were meant to be.

There was a great song from the movie, The Sound of Music, called Climb Every Mountain. You’ve probably heard it. “Climb every mountain. Ford every stream. Follow every rainbow, ‘til you find your dream.” It’s a great message and one worth heeding.

When I first was dating my husband he asked me what I really would like to do with my life. I told him I really didn’t know. If he had asked me what my dreams were, I would have had a lot more to say. The problem was that I didn’t connect my dreams with a picture of possibility for the future. They were two separate things. I had my dreams, and then there was reality.

My hunch is that I’m not alone in this tendency. We have learned to keep our dreams and reality apart. But the real truth is that our dreams are a bridge to our future if we nurture and grow them. We have to believe in the possibility of our desires. God really loves to gives us the desires of our heart. If we learn to value the spark of creative imagination that Source gives us, the universe will respond in helping us to manifest those desires and dreams.

Our collective future depends on the ability of each of us to hold and incubate beautiful dreams. Do remember to dream! Ask Spirit for help in holding onto your dreams and bringing them into reality. Your future—our future depends on it so dream big!

Comments