I Have a Dream…

Dreams are great. They give you something to aspire to, something to look forward to. Looking ahead to things in the future can be very encouraging when today isn’t so great. But dreams take this a step farther. Dreams are something big that you hope to do or become in the future. They aren’t just events or special moments that you are anticipating—they are bigger than that. They are your future. Or so you hope.

One interesting thing about dreams is that they change. Personally, my dreams for the future change constantly. When I was younger, I wanted to be a veterinarian, a writer, a teacher, and at one point, a killer whale trainer. These were some of my various aspirations at different stages of my life. I’ve always wanted to be a wife, and I’ve almost always taken for granted the idea that I would one day be a mother. Now I am a wife, and very happy about that I might add, and I’m planning and hoping to make a career as a teacher’s assistant and a writer. I’m also once again planning on becoming a mother in the future.

The people who know me best know that I love planning. I love thinking about the future and plotting out how things will go. It’s very exciting to me, thinking about what I want to do when I “grow up.” Of course, I’m starting to realize that maybe there is no such thing as growing up— we’re all just bigger, older, and much more burdened versions of our child-selves. But that’s a topic for another blog post!

Anyway, as I was saying, I think that it’s fun to plan for the future. I especially think that it’s fun to plan the future with my husband, given that our future is going to be together. I like talking with him about our future house, where we’re going to live, what we’re going to do for a living, how we’re going to raise our kid (or kids), etc. Even when we don’t know for sure exactly what those answers are, it’s still fun to think about.

And that’s the other thing about dreams. Not only do they change, but as it turns out, it’s ok when they do. I know some people who feel terrified or confused when they think about the future because they don’t have a clear plan. But if you ask me, that’s nothing to worry about. One way or another, God will take care of His children. So even when you don’t have a plan or you don’t know what you’re going to do, you don’t need to panic. You can have fun thinking and planning, while still knowing that things can and probably will change, and knowing that it’ll still be awesome. Because if you are God’s child, then God will take care of you.

My husband is hoping to start his own business after graduation. He wants to be an energy auditor, and help people make their houses for eco-friendly and efficient. He doesn’t know exactly how he’s going to start his business or run it yet, but he has some ideas and most importantly, he has a dream. It can be scary sometimes though, when I think about us first getting started after college. I’ll be an inexperienced writer with an associate’s degree in liberal studies, searching for a job as a teacher’s assistant; my husband will be a new graduate with his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and plans to start a business. We somehow expect to make a survivable income on this. Will it work? Maybe. Will we survive? Absolutely.

And I guess that’s the adventurous part. We don’t really know if our current dreams will come true, or if we’ll even have these same dreams in a few years. We don’t know if our plans will fall through. But it’s alright because we will be ok. We will survive, even if our dreams don’t. That is part of daring to dream— accepting the possibility of failure.

In a marriage, it is important to support one another’s dreams. You may have to sacrifice things in order to make room for his or her dreams. Your spouse should do the same for you. The result is two people, fully supported by their significant other and pursuing their dreams. That is how marriages should be! I’ve heard it said that people should make sure that their dreams align before they get married. I say (for the most part) that that’s ridiculous. Even if your dream is to live in Africa and help orphans while your spouse’s dream is to live in Tennessee and open a horse rescue, your commitment to each other should be stronger than your individual dreams for the future. A marriage requires compromise, and not just compromise, but a sincere willingness to give up things for one another. That way, nobody gets bitter. You compromise joyfully and find a way to either develop new (and possibly similar) dreams, or you find a way to make both of your dreams succeed. In this case, the couple could go to Africa several times a year for mission trips to help orphans and live the rest of the time in Tennessee at the horse rescue, for instance. It’s a simple matter of being flexible. And if you are committed enough to get married, than certainly you should be committed enough to bend a little for each other’s benefit.

So there you have it. I have a dream. But it’s not the end-all, be-all of my future. It’s just good fun! Of course, my current dreams might come true after all; I just won’t know until I get there.

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