Learning to Dream...Again | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Learning to Dream...Again | Previous Challenge Entry
By Glynis Becker
10/09/14
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My hands hovered over the keyboard. Where should I even begin? Do I look into airfares? What's a good price? How do I find a hotel? Will I need to rent a car? That's when the realization came over me: I've never, in my just-over-forty-years, planned a trip for myself. I always let someone else decide we're going to take a trip, then they drag me wherever it is they want us to go. I'm usually okay with it. After I get over the idea of living out of a suitcase, I generally have an enjoyable time, even if traveling is not my favorite pastime.

Then, unbidden, the secondary insight, the one with the broader implication that I'd rather keep hidden showed up: other people make plans for me, because I like it that way.

I don't make things happen. I fall into things. I am my own passive voice.

In my quest to stay safe, to never be uncomfortable or stand out in a crowd, I have allowed life to happen to me. Is it possible for a Jesus-follower, which I consider myself to be, to live a life of such passivity? How does one assist God in building His kingdom and bringing hope to a broken world when one never chooses to get up out of the chair, or out of the boat or out of their own head and move?

Is it possible for me to believe that God can do anything, yet never dream an impossible dream about what He might want to do with me and through me?

All my years of proudly claiming an easy-going personality were washed away with a splash of cold water and shown for what they really were: apathy.

If I don't make the decision, then I can't be blamed for the outcome. How's that for shirking responsibility?

If I allow my circumstances to just happen, then when it all goes bad, I am the victim, not the cause.

Writers are taught to eschew passive voice. I, as a writer, should despise passivity. I should hate characters who wait for an outside force to act on the immovable object. I should want to create the character who, with sheer will, faith and an imaginative lever, moves the mountain out of the way, in order to tell the story. My story. Or God's story. Or the better story that contains us both.

I want to be active. Not just physically active, but spiritually, emotionally, somehow in tune with the movement of the Holy Spirit and ready to walk on the waves when He says, “Come. I have a project for you.”

Closing my eyes, I said a prayer, one of sadness and regret for all the years I have wasted choosing to anchor myself to the shoreline or worse, never putting up the sails while out on the water, letting my boat drift aimlessly. I said another prayer, then, this one of thanksgiving for the grace that allows me the chance to always begin again. Today is a new day.

This journey into myself began with a trip, a physical change of scenery. The outcome of that trip may be change the path I'm on. We'll have to wait and see. More importantly, though, I wonder how this discover will change my personality. Will this give God the right consistency to mold me into a shape far more Christ-like, something He can more easily use? Maybe, though probably not right away. Change takes time. Good thing my God is in it with me for the long haul.

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