I am a dreamer

When I was four, my highest aspiration was to be a princess and I refused to go by any name other than Cinderella. (My grandma actually thought I was delusional and needed therapy, but my mom reassured her that I was just a daydreaming toddler.) But to be a princess, I thought, was my purpose in life.


As I grew and matured, so did my dreams. In high school, I decided I wanted to travel the world and sing. I had learned how to play the guitar and started writing songs for my "up and coming album." Through a series of events, I also fell in love with my high school sweet heart. As we retreated to Bible College, I was faced with a strange new desire: to be married. I knew that this desire deeply conflicted with my other. At first I thought, I'll make it work. I can be gone for a certain amount of months during the year, and home for others. Although, the plan was feasible, it was not practical. But more importantly, it wasn't God's plan.

I struggled for a few months, trying to decide what I wanted more, to be married, or to be famous. I finally surrendered my thinking to the Lord. "Ok God, just change my heart according to your plan." I still remember the morning when I woke up and the first thought that popped into my head was, "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him." We were engaged a month later, and a year later, married. 

You would think by then, I would have had a clue that I wasn't the one in charge of my life. As I battled the next few years with my refusal to have children, the Lord softened my heart again. Through many restless nights of praying and talking with my husband I realized, once again, that I must ask God to change my heart. Faithful as ever, the Lord put a burning desire in my heart, to have a child. As soon as the thought of being pregnant entered my mind, I was!

As I read this passage in James this morning, I was reminded of my past dreams: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit;' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow." James 4:13 So true. I never "dreamed" about being a wife and a mother when I was a child. But how perfect is my God? He knew the fulfillment that would come from giving me the things that he had created me for. "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" Isaiah 55:8

James continues... "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'if the Lord wills, we should live and do this or that.' But now you boast in your arrogance." Let me not boast in my arrogance anymore. I see and now know, that His plans are FAR above mine, and are far more fulfilling than anything I could imagine; i.e. being a princess, or a rock star...

The best part of it all, is that God has allowed me to still pursue the things that he gifted me in, all in the context of HIS will and purpose. I have been privileged enough to be able to lead worship for various conferences and churches, and still be the wife and mother He has called me to be. (And what do you know? It turns out, I AM the daughter of a King. I may not be Cinderella, but am a princess nonetheless.. ;)

James finishes up the passage with perfect conviction: "All such boasting is evil. Therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin."- James 4:13-17

I guess it's pretty simple. I've been told, now I must do it. How thankful I am that God saved me from a life of lofty pursuits. Lord help me to remember my life is but a vapor.