I lean toward keeping my personal beliefs off the profile of this project, but as I’ve said in at least one previous blog, there are times when I need to acknowledge where this is coming from, if only to myself.

This has not been an easy journey. I guess trying to change the world and saving the world’s children isn’t meant to be easy. It can certainly be classified as a God Sized Dream even if your God is different than mine. By the way, I didn’t come up with this classification on my own, it was actually the message delivered in church yesterday, and it was a message that struck home…hard. Even my seven-year-old son looked up at me at one point and said “Mom, is he talking about you?” This was after the pastor acknowledged that even a believer can feel crushed in pursuing a God Sized Dream…that you might feel defeated, deflated and beat when things don’t go as you planned. Boy, did that resonate with me.

I can tell you, the pastor had me from the moment he identified the topic. I knew I needed to hear whatever this message was. I also knew some of it would comfort me and other parts would shake me up giving me that dose of responsibility that we sometimes need when we get lost in too much pain or adversity. I needed to remember that this dream isn’t actually mine. It’s God’s. He gave it to my heart because He believed I would use all that He’s given to me to carry it out. What made me qualified, is nothing more than a big heart. The very heart  I sometimes forget to celebrate…a heart that has enough love and compassion for a dream of this size and a heart that understands the dream itself is a gift from God.

What has caused me to struggle so much at times is that when things get more challenging or painful than I would think something of God should be, the first thing I do is try to control the dream. I try desperately to make it happen the way I see it happening and then feel utterly disappointed when I fail. I think in my heart I not only fail myself and others expecting things from me, I fail God. The reality is that I’m not failing at all until I give up on what he’s given me. There is a point to everything that happens, even when it seems so out of alignment with ones beliefs in God or what he wants for their life. I will admit, I forget this…often. So my goal right now is to work on the second qualification for living a God Sized Dream. It requires having an open mind. I need to keep my mind open to the idea that God knows what he’s doing, that he has a plan. It’s his dream after all, and I imagine His dreams have spectacular endings even when sometimes the journey feels like a nightmare.

~Caryn West