So, I’ve been home for a week and a half from Nebraska and a retreat I do not flippantly call life changing and a game changer and whatever other words mean monumental and encouraged and a little undone.

I am living my regular life of soccer, dance and gymnastics, house work, volunteering at school, church, work, child care. Yesterday morning, I almost succumbed to the scheduling monster — it was touch and go for a while there — and then Lala and I went to story time at a quaint little book store, and the reader’s voice was like a tinkling mobile over a crib, and I felt my heart slow.

Since returning, I am changed, and I am the same.

I am filled up and empty. I am energized and weary. I am enough and not enough.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

And, friends, I am beginning to accept the fact that I will not be able to put into quantifiable words the entirety of my Dreaming a God-Sized Dream experience, nor do I think most of you would like to embark on a 50-Part Series as I try.

As is true of many game changers, my weekend was built by profound words and quiet moments. By ever-so-slight shifts in perspective and yeah-me-toos with nodding sisters and brothers. By not only the great bigness of God, but seeing myself as his little lamb, as the child who sings loud and clear the words of the song, “Jesus loves the little ones like me, me, me.”

I learned over the weekend that a God-sized dream is filled with some contradictions. It’s mine, but God’s. Filled with the great and seemingly impossible, yet touched by the small. Asks me to be brave, yet knows I will feel afraid.

GodSizedDream

The God-sized dream in me and you isn’t about what we’ve designed after all, but about the life song the Creator’s placed within.

Where do you see beauty?

Where do you see need?

Where do you feel closest to God?

What are the absolute yeses in your life?

Where do you brush up against the eternal?

The answers to these questions and the journey to find the dream aren’t like the world’s. For in this God-sized dream, success isn’t ours to make, and it’s so different than the messages that circle around our heads, flash across our screens. It’s not about numbers and accolades and dollars, nor about posting the right inspirational posters in front of your face or reaching out to the right people.

Instead, we successfully live this God-sized dream when we follow God, obey him in the promptings he’s placed within our hearts and in our very lives and put one foot in front of the other to do those things.

For me, it’s choosing focused and tender attention when my husband tells me about his day. It’s listening to my girls and hearing what they care about even when I feel done as done gets. It’s showing up faithfully to relationships and hard conversations. It’s coming along side those in need and standing with the hurting. It’s writing here and connecting with you.

My God-sized dream is largely about doing the things I’m asked to do with a heart of love.

We all are made to sing a unique song. I cannot say what yours is or if you’ve yet discovered it, but I do know that within it is joy. Not more obligation.

And it is not the kind of happiness intended to fill you right up for yourself and yours and no more, but this joy sings for others.

It gives the gift to the world for which only you are designed. Singing the change, singing the hope, singing the blessing.

This is a continuation of my story, reflecting upon last weekend’s retreat in which a glorious group of storytellers and dreamers explored big, ridiculous, God-sized dreams. From here on, parts of the weekend may very well just be woven into my other stories as the experience works its way into the fibers of everyday life.

Linking with Jennifer at #TellHisStory.

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