I took a journey down memory lane the other day via my college journals, and stumbled upon entries about the process of the mission trip I co-led to Nicaragua. I journaled from the day I found out I’d be leading to when we were actually there and then the days when we returned to snow covered New England.
See I started out planning that trip feeling like the least qualified person to be doing it. And I basically was. The process was filled with anxiety and tossing and turning, imagining all the ways I could screw it up and all the ways it could go wrong.
And then the trip came, and it went so perfectly. Everything went the way we planned and our team was the greatest and we came back with heavy feet, wishing we could stay forever.
The greatest successes and the greatest joys come when we surrender ourselves to situations for which we feel (and probably are) completely unqualified, and trust that God led us there and will continue to guide us through.
We see lots of pinterest inspirational quotes like this one:
Which is true. But I think its more than that.
I think God wants us to dream (and gives us dreams) that are so big and so out of our control that we cannot achieve them on our own.
It reminds me of how wrongly we have accepted that quote, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It is, in my opinion, the exact opposite. I think He gives us more than we can handle almost all the time. And that reaches beyond our struggles, even to our dreams and future accomplishments.
He gives us such big dreams and hopes and challenges that there is no way we could handle them without Him. Luckily for us, as the giver of such big gifts, only He is capable of carrying them.
I just think that once we start doing things that scare us and that we feel inadequate for is exactly when He steps in and helps us accomplish the impossible. It is like He actually says, “Reach for the stars!” These are the moments when we are doing what we were made for.
I’ve just been thinking about this because this season of life I and my peers are in where we are figuring out what our lives are going to be about. What am I going to do with my life? And it often is when we start dreaming and thinking about the goals or hopes that we have, and often might start making a list of all the reasons we can’t achieve them.
But I’ve had several encouraging conversations with friends who are dreaming and reaching for the careers or places that will scare them senseless but fill them with overwhelming joy and satisfaction.
When the planning/organizationally minded friend starts applying for event planning jobs at fancy hotels.
And then the one with a heart for teens starts reaching out to high schoolers who need her and Jesus more than she ever could have realized.
And the joy-friend who, ‘surprise!’, just might receive a dream career out of a summer job that she loved and thrived in.
And the graduating one who might just use her life experiences to bless college kids in residence life.
And the one who applies for internships that just might be a perfect fit – in places only the Lord could’ve led her to.
He leads, we follow, and He surprises us and overwhelms us with dreams too big for us to hold and seek on our own. And when we trust, He helps us succeed and accomplish things we never would have ever imagined we were capable of.
Trust and hope in the dreams in your heart, because they are God-given and therefore, with God, achievable. “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
Happy dreaming (:
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