I never intended for this to be a “series” of posts…but the first one was getting rather long and I felt like to keep going it would just continue on and on…and I might lose ya. 🙂 So, I don’t know how many posts there will be, I don’t have it all planned out in a neat little box…I’m just typing and we’ll see where this goes. Thanks for walking this journey with me. You, as my blog readers, have been a big part of what has kept my blog going. You have encouraged me, you have emailed me and told me privately that you also struggle and have thanked me for sharing about depression as well as other struggles. In fact, I have received so many private emails about other women struggling, that I have been propelled even further into believing that God has given me this ministry, that He has asked me to be transparent and that I am following His lead in this. {Of course there are other awesome things that have occurred because of you, too…friendships formed, cards in the mail, books in the mail…what a blessing you are!) Thank you.
Like I mentioned a few days ago, I am in the middle of reading 2 books that weren’t even on my “wish list” to begin with…but I’m reading Strong Women, Soft Hearts
The very first part of Chapter 1 of TrueFaced talks about dreams. Funny, the book Strong Women, Soft Hearts is also right in the middle of talking about dreams. What is God trying to show me? I have been praying that He would open my eyes because honestly, at first, I wasn’t thinking I had any answers to the questions that Bloom was asking us to share. Then, on their video Angie and Jessica mentioned how so many things in our lives just aren’t turning out the way we expected. Hmmm. Now that I could definitely say is true in my life.
“God dreams that you would discover your destiny and walk into the reasons He placed you on this earth.” from TrueFaced Chapter 1, p. 13.
The paragraph that comes next made me sit straight up and nearly laugh (or cry) out loud. I never in a million years thought that someone could have described so perfectly feelings that I have deep inside me that I never even knew I had. Must be God. So I began reading and listening more earnestly. The following is what the writer says many of us feel about our own seemingly lost dreams…
“Can you possibly have any idea how much I want to believe that? But if this is true, if these words are really true, then someone tell me – what has happened to my life! I have had those dreams. I’ve experienced them to the core of my soul. I believe God has such dreams for me. But every attempt to step into these dreams has been a repeated scene of shooting myself in the foot. The circumstances change, but the shooting and my foot are in each scene. After each repeated failure, I have less confidence anything will ever change. I have these longings, these dreams, that I’ve always thought were from God, aching to be released. But far more often I just hurt, confuse and frustrate the very people and environments I long to bless. It’s as if nobody but me can see the dream, and there are insurmountable obstacles at every turn. And though I blame others, I’m pretty sure most of the obstacles have to do with me. I’m not even sure what I’m doing wrong to thwart each effort. I just do. I’m so preoccupied with my own issues that I can’t even make sense of this moment, let alone the dream. It feels like I will never be fit, prepared, or matured to match the beauty and grandeur of what I’ve seen in the distance. The dreams are becoming cruel mirages, shimmering pools of once naive hope, now melted. I fear I am becoming jaded to such dreaming and am settling into a gray existence of sleepy living in a land where it is always desert with no oasis.” TrueFaced, Chapter 1, p. 14, emphasis mine.
more to come…
Candace,
thank you for sharing your journey here. I am interested in hearing more about Truefaced…
My local library has the book that Bloom is working through right now but not that book. Have you read more? Are you planning on still giving more of a review?