If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying, planning, and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started. – Drew Houston, co-founder of Dropbox
I couldn’t agree more. It probably explains most of my life. It’s why I married Heather, joined staff with Cru, adopted Macie, Rece, and Trey, became a Team Leader in Destino, and moved to Base Camp. It’s why we started a grass-fed beef business as a homeschool entrepreneurial project turned aspiring family business, and have the opportunity to see faculty ministry launched across South Texas.*
On what has turned out to be each major journey, while we generally had a pretty clear vision for where we were going, we certainly didn’t have all the details figured out. Still don’t really. Because things change. We start out going down one path, but then have to trail-blaze around a deadfall, only to discover another, seemingly better way. And that better way usually leads to a whole different destination.
Is there failure in some of that? Some may think so. Maybe it is. And maybe it isn’t. But I do believe that one of the keys to success is failing. Even failing often. Because failing doesn’t happen without trying. And trying and failing go hand in hand. And opportunities involve risk.
How many amazing dreams only exist in someone’s imagination?
How many amazing plans are never given a chance because they didn’t account for every possibility?
How many truly meaningful moments are missed because someone didn’t want to risk what’s comfortable enough? Because cutting the ropes isn’t easy.
Chasing dreams takes motivation, confidence, ambition, and resilience… and involves embracing challenges, being ok with discomfort, and having high expectations.
Because no one is going to make your dreams come true for you.
Take us adopting our three younger kids. The whole journey started with the realization that we wanted to adopt. So we started exploring opportunities.
But we just couldn’t get around the ‘pick a country’ part. At the same time, we had friends suggest that we might think about foster care while we wait. We did enough research to get pretty interested. So we went to an informational meeting… where we agreed to take the little red folder home. That’s it. That’s all we decided we would do at that time.
A few days later, we decided to fill out some of the paperwork inside. It was another week or two before we made the decision to turn it in. We still hadn’t made the actual decision to foster. But we sensed the Lord leading and guiding us as we took it one step at a time.
Eventually, we agreed to background checks, and then training. Each little step wasn’t such a big decision. Sure, some were bigger than others, like buying a house big enough to get three siblings together because we thought that while their mom was ‘getting it together’, all would be better if the kids were at least together. And there would always be another sibling group, right?
And so, when their mama didn’t ‘get it together’, as heartbreaking as that was, adopting wasn’t a hard decision. Looking back, there is no way we would have gone from, “huh, there’s 500 kids in our county every night that need a bed, with some sleeping in the DHS office” to adopting three kids.
Each little step…
So what about you?
What dreams do you hear calling most loudly?
What paths are there out there for you to discover?
What boundaries need some pushing?
It doesn’t have to be big and daunting and complicated, like opening a reading room on the beach, or doing education differently for your kids. It can be simple, like starting a new hobby, or focusing on family dinner, which may actually feel pretty daunting.
It’s about the dream. And the journey there. And getting started.
* While this is true, I will say that each of these things looked like a series of small steps following God’s leading. While some of these have been great ideas, others may fail. As a matter of fact, it would be pretty easy to create a similar list of great ideas that did fail. And yet, I credit God completely… even the ideas that we tried that ultimately didn’t work out like we thought taught us things and involved great excitement and adventure!
Photo credit: I don’t actually know where I got it, but I love how it’s full of promise and possibility.