Dream Again

How long... how long has it been since you dreamed?

I sat in the back row, quietly filling in the bubbles on the paper in front of me.

Twenty years old and still single. With no prospects. Time was running short. I must be married by graduation. Only two years to go.

My dream? That was easy. It was "the" dream. Well, less of a dream and more of a requirement. A necessity. Life just wouldn't be life without this mandated blueprint.

Get married. Work a bit and pay off loans. House, kids... then what? They repeat it, I guess. What would life be without this bullet-proof formula?

Life... without that pattern... simply wasn't.

---

A year prior, I had dated a really hot guy. Wildly romantic. My best friend. But it just didn't work out between us. There was always something "off" I couldn't understand.

Until one day, years later, I woke up. I woke up and suddenly just knew.

He was gay.

And we were Christians, so I wasn't allowed to actually know. And he wasn't allowed to be who he was.

A few years later, he came out. But my cells...

They already knew.

---

And that guy...

15 years passed between him and me. 15 years like an ocean between us, until we found our way back to each other. To our beautiful friendship that could've always been.

And he taught me.

He taught me that we need to dream again.

Being gay cut him out of a lot of circles. A lot of opportunities. It certainly cut him off from the idyllic life blueprint. The blueprint that he, too, desperately wanted. Family, intimacy, love.

He was plunged head-first into dreaming again.

And wow, how beautiful are the chapters of his life, the art he has painted on his canvas. Building this incredible school that's growing faster than he can keep up with it.

Fostering countless kids. Adopting one. And to this day, when I hear him talk about his son, he always says, "my son." He doesn't even call this kid by his first name! I hear the oceans of love and pride in his voice. To be able to pour out his heart full of love on another.

And this guy will tell you... he might have saved his son from the foster system, but his son saved my friend from himself.

Wow.

There's something this friend and I say to each other now. You know that saying, blood is thicker than water? And we think it means that family is first?

That's actually not the saying at all. Listen. The saying goes, "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

Wow. Let that sink in. Chosen family. Sometimes we're born into family. Other times life brings us our soul families.

And those ties, they run deep.

---

When I left religion, it was time for me to dream again. To dream something bigger. Infinite?

To dream.

Our dreams feel impossible. We're stuck in this reality. All the reasons why our dreams can't work.

So, I dare you.

Dream wild. Make it a fantasy, a fairy tale. Don't ask what's possible--

Ask what's magical.

Paint a world. A world in which you are the main character, living this incredible, idyllic life.

What does it look like?

Mine looked like a yoga community, kindred spirits, and farm-to-table meals. And art. But I'm stuck in the middle of a midwest cornfield!

But then I discovered it. A yoga community just down the road from me. And in just a few weeks, I made an incredible new friend, Jessa. And although my life isn't just like my fantasy, it keeps shifting more and more that direction!

By dreaming.  By imagining. And little by little, through intentional shifts.

We talk about people who bring us down. It's this "thud" on the ground beneath us. But they never tell us that when we find the courage to spread our wings and fly, there's no limit to how high we can soar.

Life truly can become more and more beautiful, and infinitely fulfilling.

What would it feel like to dream again?