Hopes and Dreams

I try to distance myself from my hopes and dreams. I tell myself they’re silly. I bury them ten feet deep. I throw them out of a moving car and don’t wait to see where they land or if they manage to tuck and roll. I flee when they make themselves known.

At least, I try. My hopes and dreams have a habit of unburying themselves. They’re strapped so tightly into the car that I can’t and couldn’t hope to ever throw them out. They seem to be waiting around the very corner I hope will hide me from them.

There’s a reason for their continued presence: these hopes and dreams aren’t silly. If they were, they wouldn’t hurt my heart so. They wouldn’t be the things I write in my journal again and again.

They wouldn’t be the things I ask God to care for because I don’t know what to do with them anymore. I can’t do anything with them, so I give them to Him. I try to believe, despite my unbelief, that He is with me in the far more and in the insignificant. I try to listen to Him as I wait. I try to trust that He will work things according to His good plan.

It isn’t easy; everything in me wants to default to my defense mechanism. I don’t want to confess these hopes and dreams. If I don’t admit them, they aren’t real. If I can just convince myself that they’re silly, they can’t wound me.

I’m incapable of convincing myself, so I return, yet again, to my journal. I write and pray my hopes and dreams. I give them to the One who already knows them, the One who is with me in my heartbreak and longing.

Image: Katie Tegtmeyer (Creative Commons)