Did you know that carrying a dream might be the most difficult, healthy, and beautiful thing you'll ever do?  Because it might.

Carrying a dream is a whole lot like being pregnant, only dreams don't generally come with due dates that can be neatly marked on calendars.

Dreams come with tension.

"Follow your dreams."

"Go for it!"

"Make the jump."

...and all of the other pretty motivational quotes you can Pin to your heart's content.

(I've heard it all before and so have you.)

 

I don't mean to be cynical because there is truth in these lines.  There IS a time to do all of the things that the Pinterest quotes recommend.  Life does require action, but I actually wanted to talk about a very specific kind of dream today:

 

There are dreams that we have.  Then there are the dreams that are actually a part of who we are.  They are hardwired into our DNA.  I tend to think of them as the dreams that God instilled in us.  

 

The tension that makes dream-carrying painful is when you are hardwired with a dream, but life isn't giving you a landing space for the dream inside of you.  So you carry your dream and your world gets heavy with it and you can no more make it reality than a pregnant woman can make her baby come into the world.

This girl has been carrying a dream for flowers, but it goes so much deeper than just creating pretty floral arrangements.  

It's about touching people's souls with beauty that surpasses words.  It is not just flowers.  It's really a kind of way that she worships God.  It's a way that God reaches through her and puts His fingers on the hearts of others and extends His love.  That's what I just love about Jesus.  He is endlessly creative in the ways that He loves people. He deposits His creative ideas into people, and when they do their thing, His love is released into people's hearts.  

Worship is not something you do at church.  We should really get that out of our religious heads.  That is a teeny, tiny fraction of worship. Worship is the way you live your life and do your thing and extend the gift God put in you to the world around you.

I've noticed this belief within myself and within other creatives.  We feel our art deeply.  We know when something isn't quite right, and it drives us crazy.  We know we are called to more, so we chase it.  We hunt for fulfillment within our own creativity.  I don't know about you, but whenever I do that, I come up exhausted and empty.  

 

There's this chic I know who's like forty something and awesome.  Her hame is Rhoda and one time I sat in her kitchen after she'd just baked bread that smelled like heaven, and something she says a lot came to mind just now:  "It's simple.  We overcomplicate things all the time."  She was talking about Jesus and faith and following God.  We make it so much more complicated than it actually is.

You are called to offer the gift that God put in you to the world around you as an act of worship.  

 

It is that simple.  

 

Even when you don't have the perfect landing spot for your dream.  

 

I forget this all the time.  Things don't have to be perfect for me to worship God with what I do.  That doesn't mean your dream for more is not His heart.  You know better than to believe that lie.  We just short-change our right-now life when we forget that it is enough to steward our gift by offering in the small ways we can today.  

Roxanne does such a good job of offering in ways that she can in her present moment.  She works at a floral shop part time, but she is constantly giving flowers to friends and people that God puts on her heart and taking and making opportunities to do what she's called to do.  Even though she feels the tension of carrying a dream for something greater, she hasn't forgotten that it is simple.

 

 Worship is our uncomplicated expression of God's goodness.  

 

Roxanne expresses with flowers.  How you express might be organization or administration or loving your kids or leading well.  It doesn't define you.  It is just how you release who God is to the world around you.

As a creative I have a constant bevy of projects and ideas in my mind.  When I have incorrect perspective, they become heavy.  They burden me because they become things I must do as a definition of self, rather than what they were originally meant to be: an expression of love, worship, and who God is.  

 

Do yourself a favor and don't turn your worship into work.

 

Let your work be worship, and you might just find yourself holding something the hamster wheel of doing-it-all can never give you: fulfillment, joy, peace, and all of the other stuff that apparently comes as an epic package deal with the Spirit of God.  

P.S. The truth is that I wanted to share so much more of Roxanne's story.  People's stories have so much depth.  This woman has deep faith, and I might share a snippet of that part of her story one of these days too, but today's post needed to be about how to really LIVE, practically, in the middle of an unfinished story when the tension of how it will all work out remains to be seen. 

 

Hugs, Roxanne.  Glad I've gotten to see this latest chapter of your life unfolding up close.  You are walking it all with so much courage.