Courage, Dear Heart

It's been a while since I've been so captivated by a dream.

For a long time, I didn't have a dream. I settled comfortably into life, willing to follow wherever someone else led. Well, now that person's gone and I've realized that life is worth living - worth living deeply and richly. And right now, that means living a dream. It means chasing it down. Yet to chase it down, I have to learn how to run. I have to train, have to be committed, have to be willing to endure some difficulty, some setback.

Is a dream really worth it?

Dreams are terrifying, to be honest. In a lot of ways, it's easier to not have a dream. It's easier to float through life, assuring others that you have no idea what you'll be doing, but things will work out somehow. As long as you don't think about it too hard, it's downright peachy. Or it's easy to have half-hearted visions of what you may want for the future. Maybe a husband. Maybe kids. Maybe travel. Maybe seminary. Maybe grad school. If nothing else, it gives you something to tell all those people who keep asking you what you're going to do after graduation. If you tell them you're considering grad school (even if by considering you mean, thought about it once) they look far less concerned, and their parental worry is assuaged.

For a long time, that was how I lived. But sometime recently, a dream snuck up on me, grabbed me by the heart, and wouldn't let go. It's not a new dream by any means. In fact, it may be the oldest dream I have. It predates even my dreams of becoming a musician, wandering all the way back to when I could barely write legibly and had just read the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time. I became convinced that I needed to write a book, just like C. S. Lewis. So I wrote about a girl who was caught up in a magic mirror and transported to dogland - a magical place where dogs could talk.

C. S. Lewis would be so proud.

Needless to say, those first efforts were less than stellar.

But they were efforts. And the desire to write something meaningful never really left me. I've always been fascinated by words - by their ability to capture, to elicit emotion, to transform. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated with the way words are strung together to form sentences, paragraphs, stories, that can crawl into the hearts of those who read them and make a home. When I reached high school, I wanted to be an English major and become a writer, but that was pushed aside by my talent and investment in music. The dream was forgotten for a long time, lulled to sleep by the busyness of life.

Then literally one encouraging word changed everything. And now the dream of writing is back to stay.

I want to think creatively and write brilliantly.

But what if I fail? What if I'm not actually as good as I think I am? To declare a dream is to open yourself up to all kinds of criticism. It's to lay bare the deepest things of your heart. And let's just be honest. Not everyone's gonna like it down there.

Ultimately. Life is worth living. It's worth living deeply. Yes, I'm terrified by this dream. But I am also captivated by it. It's something I'm willing to work for, sacrifice for, accept criticism for, fail for.

I hope.

Courage, dear heart. I believe God has given me this dream and whispered these words to me. The place where my passion and talent meet is the place where I was meant to dwell. So lead on, God. Carry me to my dream.