Welcome to another week of our Everyday Jesus link-up. Be sure to link-up below this post, comment on your neighbor’s blog and share with your friends… Because Jesus is everywhere, every day!
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If you have been around here for a few moments, you probably already know a few things about me.
I pretend to run. I love chocolate, reading, new journals and inky pens.
And I am a dreamer. Not the kind of dreamer that my husband regularly makes fun of my for like the weird stuff that comes into my head when I am sleeping (“Ok, so there I was with Abe Lincoln, a beaver and a giraffe…”) I mean the kind of dreamer who loves imagining the “What’s Next?” that God has for me.
Every year for as long as I can remember, I have always had new goals/resolutions/etc for the New Year. But 2014 was the first year that I literally mapped out some “God-sized Dreams,” per the inspiration of my URL friend Holley Gerth.
Some dreams came true, like running a half-marathon, paying off our student loans well ahead of schedule, reading ALL the way through the Bible (yes, Numbers and Leviticus included) for the first time.
A few other dreams are still in progress, waiting to see what the Lord wants me to do with them… yet a couple of others I have laid to rest, commissioning back into the Lord’s hands.
All in all, 2014 was challenging, enlightening and pretty darn cool.
And yet, here we are, already one month into a New Year– 2015. And the dreams keep on coming.
About a month ago, I took a much-needed sabbatical for an entire weekend. Yes, friends– you read that right– 48 whole hours of silence and solitude, just me and Jesus in a little furnished cabin on Harstine Island here in Washington State.
It was a little piece of heaven on earth.
I ate food with two hands. (Mainly sandwiches, because c’mon– carbs are delicious.) I prayed. I slept. (I might have been a wee bit tired, considering the first night I slept 13 hours and the next night was 12.) I read. I explored. And yes– I dreamed.
So after 48 hours listening to the Lord, he affirmed some pretty cool dreams for this year. And to my relief, they aren’t nearly as “intense” as 2014’s dreams… But yet they might be just as challenging.
Because most of the dreams stem from my One Word 2015– which is REST. (Oh boy. Something I am super-not-awesome at. This oughta be good. #IKnowRight?)
I don’t want to be a spoiler, but I will share a few of my God-sized dreams for 2015:
*Become totally debt free (all we have left is less than half of our car loan…)
*Pray intentionally for my husband– DAILY
*Do a pull-up (yes, still working on this… but 2015 might just be the year!)
*Read more. Specifically, doing PopSugar’s book list challenge. Because for me, reading is a form of rest. #NerdAlert
*Send one hard copy-snail-mailed piece of encouragement to one person in my life per week.
*INTENTIONAL Rest… Specifically: One fully day of solo sabbatical per month (where I don’t do productive things like run errands all crazy while tiny human is in daycare) and two overnights in the coming year, hopefully a weekend, perhaps around May/June time frame and again in Nov/Dec– pending army schedule cooperation.
So friends: What do you think about my dreams? What are YOUR God-sized dreams for 2015? Share one or more in the comment section below. I would love to hear from you– and I am always inspired by how God is moving in YOUR life as we seek Jesus in our everyday.
Here’s to dreaming big in 2015– and by big, I mean God-sized.
Dreaming with the J-Man,
“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.” ~Ephesians 3:20-21 MSG