Our childhood dreams give us a glimpse of what our lives are to become. Like the preview of an upcoming movie, they arouse our interest and invite us into the adventure of living while give shape to our unfolding destiny. Summers were the best for dreaming.
I can remember waking up to the glorious adventures that awaited. My upstairs bedroom was located on the North west corner of our two story house in the county. The morning breeze through my open windows made my curtains dance with excitement and like arms reaching toward my bed, they beckoned me to come explore. Then, as if slowly arising like a melody, I listened to the symphony of sounds. The rhythm of a distant hammer from a neighbor driving nails, accented by a chorus of morning doves, to Bob Hermes’ lambs in his nearby farm, bleating for their breakfast, the soundtrack of a summer day had begun. Then, the smells from my mother’s kitchen wafted up the stairs, through my bedroom door danced around my nose until appetites became duly aroused. The fragrance of bacon, eggs and bread lured me from my cool sheets. Its time to get on with the day.
The one unchanging constant of those days- exploring! Something new was waiting to unfold. It was summer after all. Maybe our motorcycle gang would go cruising down Taylor Road looking for adventures. Yes, our moto
rcycle gang. Our bicycles were easily transformed into motorcycles by clipping playing cards to the spokes by using my mother’s clothespins. Then there was…. The Lane. Bob Hermes had a lane that traveled from his farm to access the many acres of fields he used for growing things. But to us, The Lane was magical. Perhaps we would fight the Enemy in our make-believe war as we fashioned our weapons out of sticks and dirt clods. There were dinosaur footprints back there as well. We saw them.
Another great backdrop of adventure was The Creek that snaked through the fields, slithering beneath the railroad tracks and under the bridges of Mason and Taylor Roads. Crawdads, minnows and other jittering creatures left little puffs of mud as we walked through in our bare feet. I carefully coached the younger explorers on how not to walk downstream while trying to catch specimens. Eventually they grasped the concept of “muddying up the waters.” We weren’t really choosy about our playmates back then. Any kid was invited along on our adventures. All he needed was an imagination and a willingness to get dirty.
During Life Coaching, I often ask, “How closely do your childhood dreams resemble your life now?” By looking within our dreams and along the path our unfolded life, we look for “Destiny Clues.” I believe within the Father Heart of God was conceived the desire for adventure… and for exploring. Our dreams of the future must have an impact on our lives. They whisper to our hearts, inspiring us to become “More.” Through our imagination we can explore the future, bringing back the identity and inspiration to go there, into the present moment. The future is designed to make us brilliant and infuse joy into the present. This, I believe is how God created us to explore the idea of “destiny.”
God speaks to us from the future. Since He is Eternal, He has already been where we are going. When He speaks into our present through dreams or prophetic words, we begin to create a clear path to go there within an intimate partnership with Him. God uses our imaginations to cultivate His intentions for our lives. Consider this verse from the Book of Ephesians, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” (EPH 3:20 RSV) What is beyond thinking? Surely that would be imagination and dreaming. God invites us to live our lives beyond the limitations of logical thinking. I realized this as a boy.
It was a long journey to recover this dreaming part of my heart. Much of our modern life tends to drive our hearts into the remote regions of our soul. The gradual drift toward the adult world often requires the heart to become more tame. Policies and procedures, rules and schedules are all designed to harness one to the plow so to speak, making producers of us all. But the heart refuses to be harnessed. It does not want to be confined to planners and deadlines and the endless expectations of others. The soul longs for passion, for freedom and adventures… and for life. In the words of John Eldredge, “A man needs to feel the rhythms of the earth; he needs to have in hand something real- the tiller of a boat, a set of reins, the roughness of rope, or simply a shovel. Can a man live all his days to keep his fingernails clean and trim? Is that what a boy dreams of?”
