​Have you ever dreamed about something really big for a long time – maybe even a lifetime – and then it finally comes true? I’m not talking about an amazing vacation or a new car, but more like one of those life altering dreams. If so, you might have noticed that when it finally happens, it also comes with a few things you didn’t anticipate. Like an addendum of stipulations included with a contract, dreams often have long strings attached, making them even harder to achieve and surprisingly complicated to manage once they come to fruition.
 
Most people significantly underestimate their readiness to pursue a dream or receive a blessing. It’s fairly easy to imagine the incredible, but when we do, a couple of things usually happen. Either we are blinded to the things that need to change in our lives to make the dream possible, or we give up entirely on the thought because we lack the courage to believe it could really happen. For some, the disappointments of life have made them feel so downtrodden that they gave up the notion of dreaming big a long time ago.
 
The reality is that all really big, audacious, life-shaking dreams always have strings attached. One of the strings is obvious: most dreams require extremely hard work and take a long time. Other strings are less pronounced. We start with just a tiny tug on one of them, and then suddenly realize we’ll be pulling on it for many years to come. Take for example, my dream to write a novel. For more than 20 years I have been dreaming of having the time to make it happen. That may seem like a long wait, but now that I’m living the dream, I’ve realized that if I had been able to do this any earlier in life, I would’ve failed miserably. In fact, there are days where I still feel like I am woefully unprepared and incapable of doing this. Not because the words for the book won’t come, but because of what I’ll call the longest string in my life. We all have one… our longest strings. It’s the thing that never seems to go away… the bad habit, the weakness, the constant frustration, the limitation of some sort. It’s the string that always seems to wrap itself around your heart and pulls tight enough to leave scars. The apostle Paul called it “the thorn” in his side. And while scholars have never figured out what his thorn was, Paul made it clear that God’s dreams for his life would come true despite his uncomfortable and clearly frustrating limitation.
 
My longest string is anxiety. I’ve battled it since my early 20s, and while I am much freer of it today by the grace and healing power of God’s work in my life, it will probably never go away entirely. The experience of moving from a rigorous corporate structure driven by others’ requirements and goals to a flexible and wide-open work schedule driven only by my own discipline and ideas was much more anxiety-inducing than I would have ever imagined. Until now, I had never realized how much comfort and trust I placed in rules, boundaries and goals. I spent my whole life maximizing success within someone’s else’s parameters for my job, and now my job was to pursue something without anyone telling me what to do, set my expectations, or give me some idea of what the future might hold if I succeed. Now, I live in a new world where I might achieve my goal, but fail entirely to be successful. This is a difficult concept for a performance-driven, strategy-loving over-achiever like me.
 
It would be enough to freeze my creativity and send me back to corporate life faster than you can say “key performance indicators”… if it wasn’t for one, incredible factor. I have the Dream Maker. No, I’m not talking about Santa or some fantastical notion of God where we can just put in our order and expect to get our hearts’ desires. The Dream Maker doesn’t give me the desires of my heart, He gives me His. In the garden of my heart, He plants, nurtures, and sustains His dreams for me as long as I give Him my full permission and submission to do so. And while it is true that my passion for writing a novel came from Him, it took more than two decades of refinement in my heart to prepare me for this journey.
 
Like me, if you’re waiting on a big dream, you’re in good company. Noah waited 120 years before the rains came. Abraham waited 25 years between the time God planted the dream of an heir and when Isaac was born. Joseph waited 14 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and more than 20 years from the time he first received God’s vision for him in a dream. The Dream Maker fulfills His dreams for us in His time.
 
John Maxwell said that God prepares us in a slow-cooker. I love that. He goes on to say, “More important than the awaited goal is the work that God does in us while we wait. Waiting deepens and matures us, levels our perspective, and broadens our understanding.” And for me, the waiting prepared me to pursue God’s dream despite my biggest weakness. God had to prepare me to operate in freedom. Prior to now, my longest string would have not only tied me up, but it would have choked the very life out of the dream God gave me.
 
If you’ve stopped dreaming, start up again by delighting in the Lord in prayer. It’s His courage you’ll need, not your own. If you’re waiting, take heart and know that He will finish the work He’s started in you, as long as you continue to get out of His way. Philippians 1:6 says, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” If you’re asking Him to do something big, change your prayers and ask Him to plant only His dreams in your heart. I promise you that prayer will surely produce something big! Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” 

​I’ve often heard it said that “growing old isn’t for sissies.” And as my dear Dad’s health has declined over the last decade, I definitely agree with the expression. The only trouble with the phrase is that we don’t really get to choose whether we grow old or not. Yes, there are things we can do to dramatically impact our odds of living a long time, but ultimately it’s not up to us. For many people, this is a very unnerving thought and they don’t want to contemplate it. Especially if they take the next step in the thought process and ponder spending their final years like my Dad is, completely reliant on others for his daily existence.
 
As humans, we crave to be in control of our own destinies, and most of us would say we want to live a long time. But in most cases, to use another famous expression, we “can’t have our cake and eat it too.” That’s because when anyone of us gets to the point where my father is, we won’t have any control over anything. And when control is taken away, we humans don’t react well. After all, we spend our whole lives trying to find it… display it … exert it. Sometimes control brings us great things and rewards. Sometimes control destroys what we love. It’s a double-edged sword that none of us realizes the addicting power of… until we are totally robbed of it.
 
As I’ve observed my Dad on his journey, I have witnessed some of the most profound moments of quiet courage in the face of what appears to be complete powerlessness. What these moments have taught me most is the value of a well-built life over time. On the day my father checked into the veterans home, suddenly none of his material possessions mattered anymore. What continues to matter, more every day, is his unique hard-earned and carefully nurtured collection of relationships, beliefs, and character traits. These, no one and no illness can ever take from my Dad. Yes, my Dad is a veteran, but these are the things that make him my hero. When I see my Dad in his wheelchair, I don’t see an old soldier. I don’t see a worsening invalid. I don’t even see him as a shadow of his former self. I see a man of quiet courage, who was never a big talker, and now can say hardly anything at all. But he doesn’t need to be able to speak to communicate volumes. A life well-lived and well-built says it all for him. And it’s what makes him stand tall in my eyes, even now. He stands resolutely on a lifetime of building genuine friendships, raising his children to love and respect others, honoring his marriage in good times and bad, offering a kind word and a helping hand to neighbors and strangers alike, and most importantly, living every day humbly walking in trust of God. My Dad is the kind of man willing to recognize that God is in control, and while that knowledge has made him nervous from time to time, he has rarely complained and has always been quick to smile.
 
Today, my Dad can’t smile like most people do. But his faded eyes still gleam with his unquenchable spirit. He still loves Christmas. His eyes literally grin when he sees his infant grandson. He still craves to hear God’s Word read to him. He sinks into peaceful moments when music plays. My Dad is in his last battle, but he is valiantly waging it with integrity and selflessness, not wanting those he loves to suffer even one moment because of his suffering. In this, my Dad is showing his family the love described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. This act of courage will forever speak volumes to my heart: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 

​I was out running errands on Tuesday this week when I heard a DJ on the radio say that January 2nd is the crankiest day of the year. This made me feel great -- even validated -- simply because someone acknowledged out loud what I had been experiencing all day and didn’t want to admit. When I got home, one quick search on Google and social media churned up hundreds of stories and posts with the #backtowork and #backtoreality hashtags. On top of that, people everywhere are moaning about the extreme cold and the #bombcyclone ravaging the East coast (who came up with that term???). All of these factors have collided in a single week to create the perfect storm of crankiness for most of us (sorry for the pun, I couldn’t resist).

So if you research the cure for the post-holiday blues or the winter “blahs,” you will get all kinds of great tips from psychologists, self-help authors and life coaches. Many of them are definitely healthy suggestions, like spending time with friends you haven’t seen in a while, booking a special date with your spouse or child, or planning your next vacation so that you have something to look forward to even if it’s months away. All of these suggestions can create a spark of hope for those of us mired in the doldrums of the daily grind, endless snow shoveling, and the general emptiness of our homes without Christmas decorations. Let’s face it, most of us are drawn like little kids to the magic of holiday lights, no matter what our age!

But what if the cause of our crankiness right now isn’t the daily grind or the chilly effects of the bomb cyclone? The holidays are filled -- no, that’s not a strong enough word – they are packed to the gills, with constant stimulation, demands and pleasure. During the holidays, we have the best and the worst experiences all the same time. For example, we enjoy the richest of foods (repeatedly!) with the most time-consuming preparation. We see loved ones we’ve missed all year long, but then we have arguments about some long-standing family issue. We shower people with gifts they’ve always wanted, but then we feel disappointed when the same thoughtfulness isn’t returned. You get the idea. The holidays, unlike any other time of year, evoke just about every human emotion at the same time. And then, when they come to a sudden stop, we sit in the eerie stillness with the reverberating ache of life back to normal. Somehow life seems empty now. Emotionless. Boring. In the solitude of our own thoughts, we might even acknowledge that we feel six years old again as the newness of the Christmas toys fades and we have to go back to school… and homework … and the bad lunchroom food. 

What dawned on me this morning as I read a quote from CS Lewis is that my foul mood is a direct result of my perspective. Lewis said in his book The Weight of Glory, “We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Ouch. Leave it to Lewis to cut to the heart of the matter. Sure, the daily grind can get old, arduous, stressful, etc. Yes, the snow drifts dumped by the bomb cyclone will cause a lot of back aches. Life can stink. You’ll get no argument from me there. But even in moments of dread or frustration, a perspective fixed not on the situation at hand, but on the bigger picture can mean the difference between a really bad day and just a long one. The true cure for this seasonal crankiness is not found in planning your next vacation, but finding a deep, abiding hope and sense of purpose in the everyday stuff of life. Being on a holiday high is fun, but discovering soul-level joy is eternal. Instead of a reverberating ache in the solitude, this joy pulses with peace, contentment and gratitude. It’s the kind of joy that the Psalmist writes about over and over. “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.” (Ps. 63:3) “In your presence is fullness of joy, in your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Ps. 16:11) As John Piper says, “nearness to God himself is the only all-satisfying experience of the universe.”

Come tomorrow morning, I will likely be shoveling more than a foot of snow off my deck. And in the next few days, I will eat the last Christmas cookie in the tin (if my husband doesn’t get it first). But instead of focusing on my momentary dismay, like I so often do, I’m going to invite the Source of Infinite Joy to remind my fickle heart over and over that the light at the end of the tunnel is real and much bigger than I could ever imagined.