My friend Kimberly is in her 40s, like me. She’s raising four daughters, managing math homework and carpooling and meal planning—all the things that come inevitable with family life, the blessings and the burdens, which are usually just more blessings in disguise. In many ways Kimberly is both special and ordinary, like so many of us. Each with a story to tell, people to love, a household to run and dreams to pursue.
Or not pursue, depending on how we look at it.
Because lots of us don’t. Pursue, I mean.
We might have dreams that flesh out more like wishful thinking and never become actual goals, which means we never really take a step toward them or even speak them aloud to the atmosphere for fear of failure or worse, expectation that now we’ll really have to do this thing.
I’ve had dreams like that.
But I’ve also had the other kind. The kind that I write down and walk toward inch by inch, day by day.
Start a blog.
Write a book.
Build a house.
{Well, that one’s still in dream territory but we’re speaking it aloud these days. Dreams need air in order to grow. My husband and I are finally breathing oxygen into the flames.}
The thing is, all dreams-come-true have one thing in common.
A starting point.
A decision to do the dream, to give it life.
One year ago, Kimberly—a mom like you and me—made a decision to learn pointe ballet. Because, well, she wanted to. And why not?
She signed up for lessons. She stretched her body into shape one exercise at a time. She progressed from flats to bloody toes to satin horizontal pointe shoes. And her children watched her do it.
Her eldest daughter made this video, which Kimberly posted last week to Facebook.
My friend had a dream. And she’s doing it. She chose, she started, she pursued. And now she inspires me. Like, maybe I can do it, too. Not pointe, necessarily (I’m way too spazzed for that.) But something.
I can do something new.
And so can you.
What makes this story extra remarkable is that six years ago Kimberly was nowhere near dancing. She was barely living, actually, trapped in a body devastated by Lyme disease. After a hard-fought war for her health, she stands today in victory over the illness, albeit not without some physical and emotional battle scars to remind her life is precious.
We all need to remember life is precious.
We all need to be brave enough to reach for a dream.
God plants desires in our hearts and then he equips us to reach them. What is yours? Will you trust Him to see you through the work it’s going to take to accomplish it? Because “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
We can do it together. Today is a good day to start.
Happy New Year, friends. May your 2019 begin in beauty and continue in God’s grace.
Let’s all keep dancing, amen?
Love,
Becky
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Video courtesy of Olivia V Productions