Last night, I have the wonderful experience of attending a Pajama Party for mothers and daughters. Not having attended a public pajama party before, I didn’t have much idea of what to expect, other than that hopefully, I wouldn’t be the only one sporting pajamas!
Even with the higher expectations, I would not have been disappointed. At the check-in we received our door prize tickets and the name sticker of a famous woman on our back, (complete with a short description). The purpose of the game was to ask other women yes or no questions in the task of determining the name on our back. The name could have been political, biblical, real or fictional, and from anywhere in the world. If you wore your slippers, this was also the time to register to participate in the “Slipper Promenade and Contest”. The five potential winner categories included the cutest, the best overall, the most vintage, the most glamorous, and the funniest.
There was a dinner of pizzas, chips, and large veggie trays. Later on, there were fresh baked cookies, popcorn, and an ice cream bar. Activity tables were set up to move freely between: a manicure station, a game table, and a coloring area. There was a beautiful, large guild picture frame suspended in the air, along with a table of silly accessories and props that made for an incredible photo booth. Volunteers signed up to play - and entertain the rest of the group - by competing in minute-to-win-it type games. The open environment even allowed for people to remain at their table and simply enjoy fellowshipping with one another. The evening concluded with the distribution of door prizes.
It was a fantastic evening, which I enjoyed greatly. The highlight of the evening, at least for me, was the speaker, Carol Cool. Carol is the type of speaker that is able to get her meaningful point across, without taking forever to say it or needing to supplement her talk with useless information. Any person, myself included, who struggles with a shorter-type attention span, can appreciate this! She is engaging, down to earth, honest, and she has common sense (a characteristic I highly value in a speaker). Best of all, she provides the right kind of encouragement that we need to continue living a life serving God, no matter what life circumstances one may currently be experiencing.
As followers of Christ, we know that living our lives to serve God doesn’t necessarily mean dropping everything, signing up to become a missionary, and moving to a foreign country. We can allow His light to shine through whatever our current calling happens to be; whether it is staying home with children, ringing up customers at a check out, making sales calls, or sitting in a corner office and managing a company!
On this night, Carol began to speak about dreams; the aspirations for our lives. She talked about those dreams we currently entertain. She touched on those we have had in the past which have since died or become buried due to fears of disappointment or disapproval. She presented two fantastic questions to get us thinking:
- What would you do if money was no object?
- What would you do if you were guaranteed not to fail?
As I considered these questions, I wondered, what do dreams have to do with serving God? Aren’t dreams sort of selfish? We have dream houses, dream cars, dream jobs, dream shoe closets, our Pinterest pages; all those things that we want, but don’t necessarily need. Goodness, I struggled to remember my dreams; not having thought about them or shared them with anyone in so long. Real life has taken precedence since my dreaming days.
As Carol talked about how dreams sometimes die or sometimes become buried, she shared how the dreams that God gives us keep making an appearance; they keep coming back. She used the beautiful phrase “God Given Dreams” and a secret door in my mind was opened and I was able to make a connection. My family. I am living one of my dreams in raising my family! I have spend so much time and effort and energy into raising my children and meeting the needs of a family that I had completely overlooked the fact that I was living my dream. It’s more than just raising a family; along with my husband, my dream is to see my children grow up seeking a relationship with Jesus. Carol explained how with God given dreams, God provides whatever we need. My family is blessed with a large extended Christian family and a wide circle of friends who love Jesus; God has provided the proverbial village that it takes to raise a child. I have faith that my husband and I have been given what we need, and will be given whatever we need in the future, to do our part in raising our children to follow Jesus.
Carol helped me to remember another dream that I’ve had, that also tends to get lost in the daily business of life: the dream to encourage and help people be at their best. To help them change their life for the better and to encourage them in their relationship with God. To inspire them to confirm the call God has on their life so that they may perform great deeds in the eyes of the Lord.
It’s a big dream, and we all know that dreams don’t come easy. They don’t happen overnight, sometimes taking years or a lifetime to achieve. I realize that I may very well never see any sort of final results for this particular dream during my life on earth. I feel like I’m still waiting on the Lord to show me how he wants me to take on this task. Will it be through the simple daily interactions I’m currently experiencing? Will it be through this blog on which I feel led to compose the occasional entry? Will it be through the Friday night gathering my husband and I dream about hosting at our home every week, if only we could find a solution to the lack of car parking spaces?
Or will be it be something even more amazing and unbelievable to me, so much so that I can’t possibly imagine it? Who knows? God is already leading me into new situations that I would normally avoid.
I’m not a public speaker: crowds make me nervous, sometimes I feel faint, I don’t like being the focus of attention, I don’t have great ideas to speak about or keen insight to share, but I’ve already felt led by Him to speak to our youth at church twice now! I don’t have much in the way of advice or ideas or interesting thoughts, but I’ve felt led at times to write a book about what God has taught me through daily life with my family, particularly the God lessons I've learned from my children. These are ideas outside my comfort zone, but I remember Phillipians 4:13 : I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. When I find myself thinking “Lord, why me? Surely you want someone who is well spoken or clever to do this task!” And he directs me right to 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 (see below). It’s my favorite verse to remember when I think about God calling us to do his work.
That’s the wonderful thing about following God’s calling. We become less and he becomes more. It’s not so much “what I have to say”, as “what God has to say”. Knowing this helps me to trust in Him, and to give it all to Him.
What are your “God Given Dreams”, as Carol so adequately phrased. What has God been calling you to do? How can you begin to allow God to work through you? What steps can you take to see that His will is done? God has a plan for you; and it’s you that he has chosen - above everyone else- to see that it is done in accordance to his will.
Forever in Him.
