A Little Girl’s Dream

As a young girl, I dreamed of being a writer. I loved to read, and I thought it would be so amazing to be an author when I grew up. Then life happened. I grew up. That dream became just a little girl’s dream and I moved on to real life.

Fast forward thirty years later. In the past several years I have really wanted to do something to help bring in an income for our family. I dreamed and journaled and brainstormed what that could look like. I tried my hand at lots of different things. First, I got on a cake and cupcake kick for a little while. I learned how to make fondant and experimented with that. Then I researched gift baskets and how I could make those and sell them. After that, I tried sewing for a while and made bags. I loved them and had fun making them, but it took more time than I had to give. Eventually, I stopped.

My Dream Came True

I started my blog a few years ago. My dream was to have a business with products to sell. I had my blog and wasn’t sure what else to do with it. Somewhere along the way, the dream I had as a little girl made its way back to my thoughts. I started thinking. What if I could write a book? What would that look like? How would I do it? Would anybody buy it? I finally sat down one day and wrote the first chapter.

Last year, I rolled out my first book, Red Rose Rising. I followed that up with a Christian inspirational book, The Hidden Pain. Now in just a few weeks, my third book will roll out. On the one hand, it was amazing because my dreams were coming true. I was finally an author. But can I be honest? It didn’t make things perfect. This is the first of a two-part blog post. In the next post, I will talk about continuing to pursue your dream. It’s awesome to establish your business, create your first product, and make your first sale. But then reality sets in. You have to keep creating. Then you have to figure out sales tax and income tax. You have to put money back into your product or business. You have to deal with people who don’t care for your product. Sometimes, it’s too much and we are tempted to give up on our dream. I will talk about all this in part two.

God’s Gift to Us

I am doing a study in the book of Ecclesiastes right now. Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible. These verses stood out to me this week.

After looking at the way things are on this earth, here’s what I’ve decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that’s about it. That’s the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work. It’s God’s gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It’s useless to brood over how long we might live. Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 MSG

God gives us the ability to work hard and enjoy the profit from our work. It’s His gift. So why shouldn’t we enjoy the work we are doing? God didn’t create us uniquely with a combination of personality, abilities, talents, and interests that are different from anybody else so that we could just show up at work and punch a clock. Nor did He design us to just exist. I believe God gives all of us a dream too big to accomplish on our own. He does that so we are forced to depend on him.

What’s Your Dream?

What dream do you have? Is there something God has laid on your heart to do? Is there something you have always wanted to do? If money and time weren’t a factor, what would you do? What would you create?

God gives each of us a free will. He gifts us with abilities and talents and passions. Why? So that we can use them to glorify Him with what we do or create. If God didn’t want us to be creative, he wouldn’t have given us the abilities he has. If God has given you an ability or talent or a passion to pursue something, it’s not so you can sit back and not use it. God does everything for a reason. If He gave you a talent, he wants you to use it.

Do you feel stuck at your job, frustrated with your life, or just feel like you’re missing something? Maybe it’s time to put your hand to whatever you know God is leading you to do.

If you want to want help discovering your own dream, read my post Six Steps to Finding God’s Purpose for Your Life. Sometimes you just need help to get pointed in the right direction. You can download a worksheet in that post that helps you work through a process to determine how God’s gifted you so that you can find and start pursuing your own dream.

It’s time to start pursuing that dream of yours!