Wonderstruck: Dreams

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 

Langston Hughes

Today, the challenge is to ponder, think about and "proclaim a bold dream"

I'm not going to lie. I don't want to. If I am 100% honest, I am too scared to voice a bold dream to myself, let alone to the internet.

I'm in a place right now where hope is a very scary thing. Because hope means that I don't know exactly how life will turn out. Will I ever get married? Will I ever move to a different country (other than the one I'm living in right now)? Will I  ever do the traveling that I really want to do? Go back and see Istanbul, the Greek Islands or a blue police call box in England? Will I do something of significance and leave behind a legacy of great teaching when I leave the school I'm currently teaching in?

To boldly declare that YES, these things will happen grates against the very core of who I am.

But what I'm learning is that maybe. . .just maybe, what that hope and belief is grating against is something that needs to be grated against.

Something inside me that has come to believe that achieving these dreams (and others) will equal success. The voice inside that whispers my life won't mean anything if these dreams don't come true. The belief that if I don't make these dreams come true, then I must be a failure.

In light of day, I can see these as lies. But how often do you shine a light on the deepest, darkest corners of your heart to see what's really there?

So when I start to hope and think of dreams as true possibilities, I am also confronting these lies. And THAT is a scary thing as well.

But all hope is not lost (idiomatic pun intended), because I'm also learning what happens when you do shine a light on the deepest, darkest corners of your heart. Or rather you let HIM shine a light on the deepest, darkest corners of your heart. I'm learning that I can trust HIM with my dreams--either to make them come true or to replace them with better ones. It's still a scary process because I don't know what's up ahead. I still don't know if I'll get married or move to a different country or get to see all the places I want to see.  

What I do know is that even if my dreams don't come true, my life doesn't have to become a "broken-winged bird that cannot fly" as Mr Hughes so aptly put it. Perhaps a dream deferred is a nudge to consider a new dream. But it is definitely a nudge to go back to the Creator of dreams and to sit with Him until He reveals what He has in store.