Day 81

Day 81

I just read the most incredible story. A friend’s sister had a dream at 15, she wanted to be an airline pilot. That seems like an unattainable dream for a small town girl. I’m sure, if she shared that dream then, someone probably told her that. I remember many of my dreams that others told me were impossible. Some of those dreams, I came close to achieving but there was always that lingering doubt in myself that was put there by others that kept me always short of my goal. Well, my friend’s sister had a wonderful life, a great marriage to a pastor, a houseful of sons, many accomplishments and achievements but after all of that she knew it still wasn’t too late to dream big. Today, she is an airline pilot! 

I was awe struck when I read this. So I went to her Facebook page to do some information mining and find how she achieved such a huge dream. I found a post about a book she read with a study group at her church, Chasing the Lion by Mark Batterson. She said that she wrote down her dreams before starting the book. She showed the list, written on a green post it, and right at the top was: airline pilot. To have held on to that dream for that long, it truly had to be important to her, part of who she knew she was meant to be. She underlined a few quotes in the book. One stood out to me,”if your dream doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough.”  She said that, as she read that book, she realized that chasing your dreams, especially those that seem insurmountable, was the ultimate act of faith. We think in terms of time and its restrictions but God exists in the eternal. What a wonderful way of looking at life!

As I look back, I realize now how much I haven’t done or even tried because it seemed unachievable. Sometimes other people told me that and sometimes I told myself. Sometimes I thought I wasn’t capable and sometimes I thought I wasn’t worthy of success. But as the Bible says, “ I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It’s not about our ability or the size of the dream or even our own strength. It’s about having faith in God even if we don’t have faith in ourselves.

I took a bad fall from my horse years ago and I had an extreme fear of riding after that. I kept pushing myself, taking lessons and getting back in the saddle over and over even though I was terrified. I had a wonderful friend named Huston Jenkins. He sold me my first horse when I was 49. We became close friends despite the miles that separated us, he lived in Missouri and I lived in Eastern Tennessee. We would talk on the phone almost every day. I use to joke that when he sold me that horse, he never knew he was taking on a fifty year old to raise. He was an amazing horseman, he was a godly man and he was the finest, wisest human I’ve ever known. He knew my struggles with my fear. He was constantly telling me, don’t worry so much because things can just as easily turn out good as bad. One day, I was on my way to a riding lesson when I had an epiphany. A woman I knew had recently had a bad car wreck on the interstate bridge that I was crossing. She would live but she had very serious injuries. I had had a tire blow out on that same bridge. It was so powerful that it spun my car around. This was at five p.m. when traffic is always heavy and it had been so seconds before my blow out. But as I found myself facing the wrong direction on that highway, there wasn’t a car in sight. I managed to turn the car around and limp to the side of the road at the end of the bridge and suddenly the traffic was thick again. A transfer truck pulled over in front of me. He ran to my window and asked if I was okay. He told me that his buddy saw what had happened and radioed him to please stop and check on me. I knew I’d just been blessed with a miracle. As I was remembering that, the epiphany came, I’ve had so many things happen in my life where I should have been seriously injured or hurt but I came through with only minor injuries if any. I suddenly realized what Huston had been trying to tell me. I called him up and told him that and we talked all of the way to my lesson. That day, I mounted my horse without fear for the first time and I rode with such confidence that my instructor took notice. I was so happy and I called Huston to share my joy while still sitting in the barn parking lot. What he said to me made my heart swell with a feeling I’d never had. “I knew you could do it. I had faith in you even when you didn’t have faith in yourself.”

I was thinking today, as I read Leslie’s post, It isn’t just about saying we put faith in God, it’s about realizing that God has faith in us even when we don’t have faith in ourselves. Realizing that makes me feel powerful and not in a vain way but in realizing that strength and power comes from God. I think my life has changed today. 

I have dreams. One, reclaiming and rebuilding my life by first rebuilding my health and fitness has raised a lot of doubt and insecurity in me. I think all of my dreams teeter on the precipice of that major doubt, I’m too old. Ive thought, I’m not only too old to accomplish this, I’m too old to even dream it. Today, I’ve started thinking on God’s eternal and not the unsure timetable of this life. It’s about faith but it’s also about realizing that those tiny steps are forward moving and they assure me that each day will be a little bit better than the one before. Life is a journey but you can’t have a journey if you don’t move. So let’s run toward those dreams because whether or not we actually reach them, the trip there is going to be one heck of an adventure.