Fear and Pride

"There's nothing but fear and pride stopping you!"

I have a friend who used to say that to me all the time.  We are on a year long team together which was full of things to be fearful of, for me anyway.  I was (and still am to a lesser degree...I hope) an insecure, introverted, people-pleasing good girl who was heading out on a year long trip with a bunch of strangers.  We were going to be sharing God's good news through music, drama and puppets for a whole year.  We traveled across our country, down into the states and over to Indonesia and Australia.  There was plenty to be scared of.

What if that cute guy on our team started liking me?  What if he didn't?  What if I really screwed something up?  What if I got sick?  What if our plane crashed?  What if I'm not all that great at meeting new people constantly?

Image by J. Astra Brinkmann

I was one scared little girl.  But this was a dream I had been after for awhile.  I wanted to share the gospel.  I wanted to be part of a performing arts team and here I was at LAX phoning home telling my mom that it might just be better if they came and picked me up.  Of course that wasn't possible because L.A. and Saskatchewan are a long ways apart.  Then something happened.

Remember that cute guy?  Well, he didn't like me, he was dating another girl on the team, but he became my champion.  He got on the phone with my mom and reassured her that he would walk me through this and that she had nothing to worry about.  Then he took me in hand and marched my hyperventilating self onto the plane.

The seven of us lived together for a year, learning how to deal with conflict, learning who had what was needed in the moment.  Learning how to use our gifts and talents to encourage and challenge the people that we met. And we learned how to overcome fear and pride and do what God had sent us there to do.

Fear and pride.  Two enemies of our souls that keep us from doing the thing that is needed to walk into our dream.  I still battle those two enemies and sometimes, unfortunately, they win.  Some days I 'forget' to make that phone call.  Some days I hide behind some imagined need that my kids may have so I don't have to take my introverted self out there again.  Some days my pride won't allow me to put myself out there one more time because fear is screaming at me how stupid I would be to try.

But on other days, God sends along an encourager,  some one who will take you in hand and say, "You can do this thing.  Just one more step and you'll be there. I will walk with you."  Jesus didn't send his disciples out on there own, he sent them in groups.  In Ecclesiastes it says that two are better than one.  Apparently we need each other!

If fear is causing you to shut the door to your dream you may need to swallow that pride of yours and ask someone to help you.  You may just need a partner, someone to shoulder the load and help hold up your hands when you are having a hard time believing anymore.  God told us that we need one another for a reason, because we do.

Perhaps you are the one in a sweet spot where dreams are bursting with reality all around you, then look for that one who is struggling and sitting with the dark cloud, the one who needs you to say, "I've been there before, let me give you a hand."

Don't let fear and pride stop you from reaching for the dream.

  It may seem hard to believe but someone, somewhere needs you to realize that dream, 

because their dream is depending on yours to succeed. 

{put that in your pipe and smoke it!}

May I just give a shout out to my peeps who help me keep dreaming!  You ladies rock my world - and I think ya know who you are... you are amazing.  Why not share below someone who has helped you overcome your fear and/or pride to help you walk into your dream, I'd love to hear about it.

I am linked up with others from the God-sized dream team over here:  CLICK LINK

A God-Sized Dream

Several weeks ago I got an e-mail inviting me to apply to a 'God-Sized Dream Team' with Holley Gerth.  I like Holley Gerth and a dream has been brewing and taking shape in my head so I applied.  However, because the dream was kind of vague all I put on my application was that I wanted to write a book.

Holley Gerth and the Dream Team

I didn't really think much more of it and life went on.  Then I got accepted to the team and I started reading what other people were thinking and saying and the dream in my head started to get a little less vague and a lot more crazy sounding.  I'm going to lay the whole thing out here for you so that I have something to look back on and if you are directed to, pray into it with us won't you?

My God-Sized Dream

(which is really, REALLY huge)

Note:  alot of this involves my husband and his dreams, cause we kinda go together and have been dreaming for 20 years now

1.  We want to be debt-free.  And we're farmers!!!  That in itself should be big enough.  Most of the farmers we know (including us) live mostly in our credit lines.  The cheques coming in look big, but the cheques going out are even bigger most of the time.  A repair on those machines has the potential to cost more than a small car.  Add to that the reality of living well below the poverty line while we were students.  Yup, we are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the hole.  BUT we believe that God is bigger than that.

2.  Our heart's desire is to be able to travel around encouraging people with the gifts God has given us.  We have written songs, we are both musicians and our kids are coming along nicely on that front, too.  We believe there is a message that God has given us to speak, even though we're not exactly sure what it is yet and we're obviously not ready for it, #1 being a big factor.  And my husband...well, the man can sing...his voice is a gift from God and needs to shared with the rest of the world. (like CDs and stuff)

3.  We would love to adopt internationally (Asia, India and South America are on our hearts).  Yes, we do have six kids already.  However, we have dreamed of having an international family within our walls for 20 years now.  We see that doing so has the potential to be a prophetic statement of how God sees us, no matter the color of our skin or where we come from.  We have one adopted son who is partly First Nations and 2 delightful German girls that we call our own even though they no longer live with us.  Again, #1 puts a bit of a damper on this.

4.  We would like to see our adopted son freed from the things that hold him back and have a whole, trust-filled relationship with him.  He has a long list of issues that I will not get into at this time, I could write a book about that and I probably will, but we're not quite there yet.  When he's free and willing, maybe we'll do it together.

5.  We would love to home-school all of our children so that we can do #2.  This would take a huge amount of healing in our family before it could happen.

6.  We would love to be able to encourage other parents in situations like ours.  There is very little support for families in situations where they are trying to love/manage very damaged emotions/hearts.  There is very little understanding in the public sphere for what we go through every day.  I would like to get a lot more education on this particular topic and be able to advise, counsel and comfort others who need to know that there is a way out...we haven't found it yet but we believe there is one!

7.  I love to teach and write.  I have no fear of speaking in public.  I love women's ministry and would like to combine those things.

8.  I want to write books and have them published.  I write this blog and the odd book review right now.  I have written plays, songs, poems, short stories, curriculum, articles and have about five book ideas swimming in my head, most of them started in some form.  I dearly, dearly want to see my name on the cover of a book!!

9.  I am a very creative person and would love to create something that people would like to purchase.  I've made lots of things and some of them have sold, but most of the time I feel like what I make isn't good enough for anyone to want it.  I am a pathetic marketer!!  Recently God has given me designs for two different items and I would like to see if I could make a pattern for other people to make them!

10. I'd love to own my own little store where we could sell our honey, organic products and my crafted items.  I'd love it to be a little tea shop where we serve soup and bread and people can come and enjoy a welcome spot.  I'd like it to have a crafty area where people can do something creative while they enjoy a cup of tea.  (I love a good cup of tea!!)

11.  I dream of getting my WordPress site up and running.  I bought the basics, but I am technology stupid!! I dream of having a beautiful site for all of you to come to that would fill up your spirit and encourage you on your way...

12. And then there's our house.  We dream of turning our garage into a family room with a corner for crazy gymnastics kid, a place for my dancers to practice, an area for learning to happen and an expanded entry (if you've ever been to our house you know that the entry is a necessity)!  THEN, we want to add a new garage that fits our over-sized van with living space over top of that (to accommodate our expanded family).  This would also include taking out a wall in our kitchen and opening up the existing living space so that when we have lots of people over (which is mostly the youth group...which happens fairly often since we're the youth pastors) the flow of conversation and living works better.  Again, #1 makes this difficult to even dream about, but at least we'd like to get all the holes in the walls repaired.

13. We want our farm to be self-sustaining.  Meaning that we would like to get our power and heat sources off grid, be able to feed ourselves and others off what we produce and make a smaller impact on our natural resources.

and last on my list (for now)

14.  My husband and I would love to take a trip together, maybe a cruise, where we could just relax and not worry about a thing...

So there you have it...kinda crazy isn't it?  It's kinda of overwhelming to actually spell it all out like that...that's what my God-sized dream looks like.  Phew, feels good to get it all out there...hold it gently please.