don’t let your dreams die

I remember the long, tear filled flight like it was yesterday.

In fact the date was the 6th of February 2007.

I lived in a shared house with girlfriends, I spent most nights out at coffee shops and loved to read. I was to turn thirty that coming year and I was planning a big party. I was the epitome of a single, career orientated, young adult.

Back to the flight, I was flying from LA to Sydney for work by myself and standing in the airport waiting before I boarded the plane a simple book caught my eye.

Things I want my daughters to know by Alexandra Stoddard

This book changed me.

It wasn’t the content, it was the dream it promised.

It was as if, it waved from the bookstore shelf and screamed that I needed to buy it.

There was something about the title of this book that promised me that in my future my desire to have children and to live a life sharing wisdom and life with them would one day come true.

As the flight took off, I sat and read this book cover to cover.

Simple chapters, from a mother, expressing simple wisdom that she didn’t want to die not expressing to her daughters.

I wrote in the front of this book;

‘A lifetime of wisdom that I hope one day to impart to girls of my own. Even if they are not of my own blood, if I adopt, I long to be a mother. I long to see young women live free. I long to live my life inspired and abandoned to who I am called to be. I am called to be a mother.’

On this page next to my scribbles in this book was a quote from St Augustine

‘Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure;

Where your treasure is, there is your heart;

Where your heart; there is your happiness.’

I went onto scribble;

I long to live a life of influence. I long to live a life of love and I long to lead a life of leadership.

Seven years later, sitting on my rocking chair, I was reading along my books in my bookcase and this book once again jumped out at me.

I pulled it down from its dust encased place and I opened it, with memories flooding back.

With no possibility of this dream becoming a reality back then, I dreamed, I believed and I held on even when everyone said this will never happen.

Here I am, with a few short weeks until I give birth to my first little girl and the dream hasn’t died.

Recently my husband and I wrote this on our chalk board from a scripture in Matthew 11;

28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Our desire in this next season of sleeplessness and newborn oblivion is to Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

How about you?

Are you tired of carrying a dream that tarries?

Are you worn out?

My encouragement to you is this, don’t let the dream die.

It took 7 years for me to see this dream come true, from one teary, messy flight from LA to Sydney, I cried and begged that one day this dream would come to pass. I had to learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

It wasn’t my timing.

Today that dream is nearing its reality.

She is nearly here,