Do Dreams Have Expiration Dates?

Something uncanny happened on the last day of February. I've waited too long to write about it.

As I drove to school on that barely-light Wednesday, I asked aloud, “What about my dreams? Can any of them be salvaged?” I don’t know if I was asking God or myself. I don’t know if a song on the radio prompted my question. I don’t know if I was thinking of my friend Tracy who had recently written a blog post about a dream that was delayed for thirty years and finally fulfilled. 

I do know the emotion behind the question was more intense than my usual morning disquiet of it’s-cold-and-dark-and-I-need-more-coffee. But once I entered the school, responsibilities jostled the dream questions to the end of the line.

After homeroom, I shooed my students to the church sanctuary for our weekly chapel service.

After a few songs led by our worship team, Seth, our seventeen-year-old student chaplain, began his message. His first PowerPoint slide revealed his topic, “From Dreams to Destiny.”

THAT got my attention.

Following the narratives in Genesis about Joseph, Seth made some really good points, which I jotted down while blotting my tears. He bravely shared some of his own dreams, such as wanting to someday have a family and own a minivan, not a dream you expect to hear from a high school senior.

I want to see Masada.

As he concluded his message, Seth said, “Even older people have dreams. Mrs. Brosius still has dreams. She wants to go to Israel.”

At that point, I came completely undone. After chapel, I spent much of my free period crying, trying to stop crying, and trying to make my face look like I hadn’t been crying.

I didn’t know on February 28, and still don’t know, if this message from God was specifically about going to Israel. Maybe it was God’s way of answering publicly the question I had voiced privately not much more than an hour earlier in my car: Yes, my dreams can be salvaged. Even the dreams I can’t share with anyone but God.

I do know I had not talked recently about wanting to go to Israel to Seth or any of my students. I don’t know why it was on his mind.

When I was more composed, I asked Seth if he had planned to call me out, or if it just came to him at that moment. He said he had planned it, and his parents had advised him not to. They thought I might find the age reference insulting. I’m not usually glad when my students ignore their parents, but in this case I sure was.

"Joseph Receives his Coat of Many Colors"
by Shoshannah Brombacher; pastel and ink. "

Last month at a writers conference, my friend Jim Watkins, shared a message called “Keeping Your Dreams Alive.” I scribbled these points Jim made as he guided us through Joseph’s life:

• The dream is received.
• The dreamer is refined.
• The dream is resized.
• The dream is revealed.

He told us “how to keep your dream alive when they steal your coat,” and quoted author Neva Coyle, “God is a refiner, not an arsonist [of dreams].”

Do you think God is trying to tell me something?

If you believe God is speaking to you about your dreams, feel free to comment and share.

Read about Tracy's dream here: http://stdavidswriters.com/dorm-room-dreams

Follow her blog here:  http://earlgreyandyellow.com

Follow Jim Watkins here:  http://www.jameswatkins.com

Unintentional Peninnahs

Grove City College

We writers left St. Davids Christian Writers’ Conference Sunday to return to our “real lives.” Even the best writers’ conference in the nation can have both a positive and negative effect. On the one hand, it’s the place where you first believe, “I’m a writer.” On the other hand, it’s the place where you may fear, “I’m not a good enough writer.” 

Where better to experience irony than a conference for writers?

The conference bookstore sells books written by more successful writers. The workshop leaders boast long lists of publishing credits. It’s necessary for their credibility, but it can make ordinary conferees feel inadequate.

Peninnah appears in the biblical book of 1 Samuel. She was the other wife of Hannah’s husband, Elkanah. Peninnah had children, while Hannah had none. Elkanah loved Hannah in spite of her barrenness, but had no problem reproducing with Peninnah, although he didn’t love her. 

More irony.

In that era, around 1000 B.C.E., having no babies was worse than attending a writers’ conference with no publications or prospects. Peninnah stuck it to Hannah whenever she could. “Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat.” (1 Samuel 1:6 – 7, NIV) 

http://www.salon.com/2011/01/07/us_sci_tear_signals/

Peninnah probably recited the names of her children like top selling titles on Amazon.com.

She intentionally wounded Hannah, and it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why. However, there are many unintentional Peninnahs out there, just being their sparkly selves, and living their spectacular lives, holding no ill will against us, but we Hannahs still bleed. We fear we’ll never have what they have.

One writer friend, Elle Love, who couldn’t come to conference, wrote this poem while we were away:

DIM

I want to be
a light of the world,
but others shine
much brighter.
I am almost
invisible.
Do I make a difference
in the darkness?
Or will I always be
insignificant?

When I read it, I remembered a similar poem I’d written years earlier. It wasn’t in any folder on my current laptop. Elle prayed and I found a print copy of the poem, packrat that I am.

INVISIBLE

A taper flickering
Unseen by the noonday sun.

A voice wavering
Unheard by the fanfare.

A lone syllable
Unread by the sonnet.

A crust of bread
Untasted by the feast.

Insignificant to all
But God.

When we feel this way, a pep talk probably won’t help. We heard lots of those at conference. We might need a good cry. And a good pray. Like Hannah. “In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.” (1 Samuel 1:10)

Hannah’s happy ending came when God answered her prayer for a son. She even wrote a poem about it, found in 1 Samuel 2:1 – 10. In addition to her firstborn, Samuel, Hannah received three more sons and two daughters. 

My beloved, cherished fellow writers, I wish we all could see ourselves as God sees us and believe in the success he has for us, whatever that looks like. Please keep sowing your words and water them with your tears and your prayers.

https://josephgonzales.com/coffee-i-dont-love-you-anymore/

Summer Bucket List

     The preschool teacher at my school put up a bulletin board called “Our Bucket List” with a beach pail and shovel for each little tyke to express his/her summer plans.

     Dictionary.com says a bucket list is “a list of things a person wants to achieve or experience, as before reaching a certain age or dying: a bucket list for a terminally ill patient” and notes the expression comes from the idiom “kick the bucket,” meaning to die. I started to track down why “kick the bucket” means to die, but decided not to follow that bunny trail today.

     I have never formally compiled a before-I-die bucket list, but if I did, Visit Israel would be number one. However, the bulletin board inspired me to compile a summer bucket list. We can all check back in August when school starts to see how I did.

   Here in no particular order are the items on my summer bucket list.

• Attend St. Davids Christian Writers Conference in Grove City, Pennsylvania, June 22 - 26. This is a no-brainer.

  

  How many people can you tag?

  I attend every year. You can, too. And you should. Where else are you going to hear a live performance by St. Davids Sanctified Ukulele Band?
  
• Go to Edith’s Kitchen in Danville, Pennsylvania to jam with the other ukulele players. Apparently this is possible every other Wednesday night from 6 to 8.
  
• Visit my friend in Olean, New York.
  
• Go on a Hiawatha River Cruise. I haven’t done that in many years.
  
• Go to the beach. That’s always on my summer bucket list. And my fall and spring bucket lists.
  
• Finish my novel, Surviving Graduation. I should have put that first, but didn’t I say the list was in no particular order? I need to get from 20,000 words to 50,000 words and get Laney and friends out of high school. I need to get Daddy home from the Middle East. I need Laney to choose between Calvin and Joshua. I need to choose between Calvin and Joshua. Or find a way to concoct a believable accident that merges the two flawed boyfriends into THE ONE PERFECT BOYFRIEND. If you have read Surviving Meemaw and Surviving Jamaica, feel free to express your opinion of the boyfriends. If you haven’t read them, put them on your summer bucket list.
  
• Buy new drapes for my bedroom. This really should happen.

  

  There will be a public bonfire
  to dispose of these beauties.

  The same gaudy, ugly drapes have disgraced the bedroom windows since we bought the house sixteen years ago. Their continuing presence speaks both of my finances and my ability to ignore what is right in front of my face.
  
• Declutter my house. (Cue hysterical laughter.)
  
• Clean my house. (Cue frenetic, desperate laughter.)
  
• Attend Montrose Christian Writers Conference for the first time.
  
  
• Go to a Williamsport Crosscutters baseball game.

  

  A flying Crosscutter

  Eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor and at other people.
  
• Visit any or all of my siblings in their foreign locations:  New Jersey, Ohio, California, and Pure Michigan.

 

            Meanwhile, today’s to do-list includes posting this blog. So I shall.