God-sized Dreams - Facing Fears

Facing the Fears

**** Dreaming God-sized Dreams over at Holley Gerth's - I've been a bit behind on my posts but I'm jumping in here and dreaming with my eyes wide open****

Fear, it is a vicious thing.  It has teeth and claws and hackles that raise.  I have often felt its death blow and felt the fangs dig deep into the life artery that is my dream.  And for too long I have lay motionless, too afraid, too startled as I watched my dreams bleed out and seep into the ground, layer upon layer of self depreciating talk, feelings of worthlessness and failure taunting me from the deep.  A fertile ground for the dreams that have died because of my doubt.

Failure, most of all, I fear failure.  I fear that my failure as a writer will be what undoes me.  Words, they have long been my playground.  They comforted when I was sure that life for this little girl couldn't get much worse.   I could often be found writing, creating a means of escape through words.  Words read and word written. 

And I buried this dream once , this dream of stringing words, into phrases, into sentences, into paragraphs, I buried it deep.  I allowed it to be buried because the lies others whisper  often feed a clanging belief system that we cling to as truth.   It stayed so long in my heart that I was certain only muffled coherence emerged - and I believed, that muffled sound was the only thing I was capable of.

But God, He has a way of producing glory from pain.  He has a way of taking the uglybeautiful and coaxing it to blossom and unfurl.  And when I dug deep, when I dug past the self loathing, the choking roots of doubt and insecurities, dug deep into His Word - HIS WORD - I found my dreams amongst those pages .  Dreams held in trust, cared for - just held there waiting for me to accept what God has  planned, each step a plotted course that He has already numbered.

And this desert land that has too long been my heart?  This desert land where dreams laid parched and wilted?  It has become fertile again.  Joy has blossomed and with each numbering of gifts I have felt the first breath of Spring begin to breathe life into dreams.  This counting that has created rivers and streams from which my dreams feed.  "Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the desert.  The parched ground will become a pool and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land."  (Isaiah 35:6 NLT).

Truth is a more fertile ground than the fallow field of failure.  Keeping my eyes on Him, trusting Him to be my source is the only way to silence the hiss of lies and doubt.   I write because it pleases God, I write because it is my way of connecting with Him and if that is all, the only purpose for this tapping on keys and laying bare my  heart - so be it.  So be it because that is how God designed it.