serving two masters, take two

I am a daydreamer. Ask anyone who knows me. I may seem to be essentially serious (ha!), but really I keep myself sane and fill dull moments by dreaming up all sorts of whimsical things. Sometimes, as in Harry Potter, my dreams will be particularly sophomoric. I’ll imagine a spider in roller skates or my least favorite professor in a ridiculous outfit. Usually my dreams are everyday. Perhaps, like 19-year old Sebastian, I'll consult my teddy bear named Aloysius (or in my case, my pet rock named Penorphius). I'll come up with absurd schemes and events whose very appeal lies in their peculiarity and fun. I will dream up random outfits or funny responses to a situation. But in my time I’ve had some serious dreams too.

When I was probably seven or eight, I had my heart set on being an astronaut. I dreamed about it whenever I was bored. I would shuffle outside at night to make a map of all the stars. I would shine my flashlight into the night sky (to see the stars better, because that's why we use flashlights in the dark) and wonder what happened to that beam of light. When my mom told me that the light went shining on and on forever, I would keep my flashlight off so that the universe wouldn't fill up with light. I still wanted it to be dark sometimes so that I could look at the stars. Not that this instance of youthful ignorance has anything to do with astronomy, I just thought I'd share. Anyway, while I was still dreaming of outer space, I exceeded the maximum height for an astronaut. That dream sputtered to an untimely death.

As soon as I recovered from my disappointment (which actually took a while) I knew that I was going to be an author, doing nothing but write stories. I soberly picked out a Lisa Frank notebook at the store and began writing stories in it. Because my livelihood now depended on these stories, however, I found my creativity suppressed and my originality stifled. I was quite embarrassed. That notebook, however, despite all my efforts to nonchalantly destroy it, is still floating around somewhere, thanks to the preservative instincts of a proud mother. I really wish she had tried to keep another notebook, a nondescript pale blue one, in which I wrote stories about my childhood, before I depended upon writing as a profession. Just for fun, I described stacking firewood with my dad, of how he let me 'drive' a backhoe and how I was scared to death of wrecking it. I talked about my first impression of my favorite mountain. There were some really good stories in that notebook. Note to self: search for that book over Thanksgiving break.

Once I realized that my career-starting material, found in that blue notebook, had been misplaced (like most everything else I own), my dreams were violently sent off in a new direction. After making the surprising discovery that I liked math, I decided that I wanted nothing more than to be an engineer. What would I do? Why, work for NASA of course!! For a while, had you asked me what career I would pursue, I would have told you to come visit me in Florida.

Then I started high school.
High school math frightened me.
Thus ended my dream of engineerhood.

And so it goes. Ever since I was little, I have been in the practice of dreaming out every single minute of my waking life. I had dreamed out my theses and my graduation speech roughly by ninth grade. You just thought I wrote them at the last minute. Really, I had been pondering them for years.
I dreamed of college volleyball for quite some time, so when I was offered a volleyball scholarship, I wasn't even faintly surprised. After all, that was how I had planned for it to happen. As of last month, Tiffany and I are dreaming of moving to New Zealand together. And I'm quite sure that I've been dreaming of marrying and raising kids since I was old enough to grasp a doll.

I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong with dreaming about the future, but there are certain risks of which dreamers, especially Christian dreamers, particularly need to beware.

Though I am not really a fan of the Christian band Barlow Girl, some of their songs really stand out to me. I liked the song "Surrender" the very first time I heard it. This song voices the agonized cry of someone who is clinging to her dreams and cannot trust God with them. "If I trust you with my dreams," she seems to say, "how can I be sure that you will make my dreams come true? What if you say no to these dreams forever? I don't know if I can handle that." This is the ever-present struggle for the dreamer.

The real test of faith, for people like me, comes when God asks us to submit our dreams to his plans. We have found the dream job, we have met the man or woman of our dreams, we clearly see the choice that will make all our dreams come true. It is just as we have always planned, just what we have always wanted for our life. But then God says, "listen to me. Let me choose whether or not you take this job, whether or not you marry this perfect woman. Trust me. Choose my plans over your dreams." How will we respond? Will we trust God to fulfill the desires of our heart? Do we trust that he knows what will truly make us happy?

I do.

If God asks me to give up a dream, however dear to me it may be, I will do it. I will praise him while I do it. I choose to believe that he knows what I truly need. I trust that he, like a true father, will deny me the dreams that are appealing but harmful. If I trust him in this, he will give me things that are truly good.

In conclusion (which is your cue that this is almost over, so you could at least pay attention to this last part. ...please tell me I am not the only one who snaps to a relieved attention every time the words "in conclusion" are reached), let me share with you a story my high school volleyball coach told me.

Ahem.

"Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Her mother owned a pearl necklace, and the girl would often just sit and stare at the necklace. She was always struck by its beauty and fascinated by its elegance. One day, while shopping with her father, the girl spied a small pearl necklace. She asked if she had enough money to buy it. Her father said, 'no, you would need to save your allowance money for two months to buy that necklace.' The little girl decided to save all her money for two months. She didn't buy any bubble gum, she didn't buy any new toys. She just thought of that necklace. Three months later, the little girl went with her father to the store and joyfully bought the little necklace, strung with durable fake pearls.

A few months passed, during which the girl often wore and admired her necklace. The time had nearly come for the little girl's birthday. Her father came to her one evening and asked her to give him her beautiful necklace. She looked tearfully into her father's eyes as she gave him her pearls. The next morning, however, her father presented her with a new necklace, this time made of real pearls."

This is sort of how I think of my dreams. If God asks me to give them up, dear to me though they are, I will willingly surrender them. It might be hard, but I choose to trust that when God takes away my dream, it is because he has something better for me. This is the difficult, but very rewarding stance of a Christian dreamer.