Pocket Dreams

Thomas has a dream: to start a musical band with his friends. (He has several dreams, really, which he likes to talk about often and dream about otherwise). 

The dream of a band has been brewing for a few years. He doodles cover art and plays around with band names. He makes lists of cover songs, and assigns roles to his friends. But, in all honesty, it's a dream that's likely to stay in its embryonic stage. Especially as his friends go their separate ways in the next chapter of their academic lives.

Some months ago, I sat in the car listening as he thought out loud about all the possibilities the future held for his dream. I listened as sadness tinged his voice and he realized how little time remains with all of his friends. And I knew, instinctively, the feeling that would follow next: failure.

I've had my own share of dreams--some of them modest and attainable, others elaborate and wildly unlikely. They're often my favorite daydreams, reserved for quiet moments when I'm alone, or afternoons when my pulse races with the full pregnant possibility of someday. Over time, I've intermingled them with my own talents and abilities--and sprinkled them with a sense of duty or obligation--until they felt compelling and necessary. 

In reality, though, not all dreams are meant to come true. The wonderful business plan fails to launch. The complex, thought-provoking novel is never finished. The house filled with many children echoes with the voices of only a few. Some dreams were stunted to begin with, never intended for more than quiet moments alone. But the years I devoted to them, the personal abilities wrapped up in them, the realness of their possibility makes me feel somehow responsible for their failure to materialize. I've carried the weight of those unfulfilled dreams--the guilt of them--for many years. 

As Thomas paused for a breath, I turned to him in the back seat and smiled. 

"It's a great dream," I told him, "And I think you're more than capable of seeing it through. But sometimes, some dreams are what I like to call pocket dreams. Ideas we tuck away in our back pocket for our own enjoyment. They excite us and inspire us; they're often our favorite way to pass the time alone. They're good for us. But they're only pocket dreams. And when they never grow out of the dream stage, that's all right. It's not our fault. That's all they were ever meant to be."

I don't know if he fully grasped what I was saying. I'm not sure I do myself, either. It's a complex thing, weeding out the likelies from the unlikelies. 

Micah and I had a somewhat similar conversation yesterday. We had gotten home from seeing a potential property, another step in our journey to opening accessible cottages. I haven't written an update recently, but things have continued to move forward in the background, inch by inch, in what I like to call our season of "active waiting." God has refined and clarified our vision, one layer at a time. We've encountered experts and people who could offer us wise perspective and insight we lacked in the places we needed it most. We've learned more than I ever expected to learn about everything from business to zoning to real estate to finances. We've grown and learned and progressed--a little. 

But as we walked through our neighborhood unpacking the twists and turns, Micah confided that it all seems so far off and so very impossible. Maybe even like a "pocket dream." It's scary to step out in faith into places that are so very unknown and unmapped! It's hard to wait--perhaps for even more years--to know the outcome of all the praying and planning and working. And what if we heard wrong? What if all it was, after all, was a pocket dream?

We've been asking for some very big, very specific things in this journey. Things that would both confirm and make this whole thing possible. God has already answered some of them. Others loom large. What we're asking for is beyond us in almost every way, and Micah voiced the doubt we both feel: what if He says no? Does it mean we misheard? Does it mean He's not faithful? Does it mean we failed?

I wish I had all the answers. I wish I knew how to predict what God will do. Really, even His closest followers couldn't do that. More than once, Paul's journeys were re-routed or delayed, in spite of where He felt God calling him to travel. Lazarus died, even though Mary and Martha prayed for healing--and was eventually raised to life. Abraham waited for decades--long past his prime--for the son God had promised, and at times doubted and even took things into his own hands. Yet, in the end, God was faithful to each of them. They were more than pocket dreams: they were promises, they were things God intended to do and was capable of finishing. The road to their completion didn't look like they expected. There was pain and loss and delay along the way. But at the right time, and in the right way, God finished what He had started. 

I reminded Micah that our kids ask us for things constantly. Sometimes we say "yes," sometimes "no," and sometimes we answer with something different, something that will be better for them or more useful. No matter how many times we say "no," though, or provide something different, they never stop asking us for things. Their faith in our ability to provide never waivers. They never doubt that we could provide what they ask, and (I hope), they never doubt our wisdom in the things we do provide. 

So whether our hearts and minds are full of pocket dreams or promises, what remains for us is the same: to stoke the dream and give it room for God to speak into its spaces. To ask Him for what we need, to commit it all to Him. To step out in faith when He lays the next step before us. To believe that our dreams, our beautiful, hope-giving dreams, could be reality. He is capable; it is possible. Our job is to trust and keep on dreaming.