{yours truly on the first day of kindergarten}
Five years old and wearing a new dress, I ask my mom to put me on the bus to kindergarten. Starting school is a God-sized dream and I think being a big girl means going on my own. My sweet Mom {bless her heart} finally agrees. The ride to school goes fine but on the way home I’m sure I’ve missed my stop. By the time I’m back to my mom’s arms my little heart is beating hard.
The next day my Mom takes me to school. And every one after.
I don’t know where we get this idea that to be big girls we have to get on the bus of our dreams {and our lives} alone. We want to seem strong, independent, capable. We worry that accepting help will make us a burden. And yet God never intended us to go through life that way.
Authors Henry Cloud and John Townsend say it this way:
We’re all inclined to do it ourselves. Asking for help and support is inconvenient and uncomfortable. Yet God built dependency into all of us. We all need God, and we need each other. “No Man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote the seventeenth-century English poet John Donne. Even God reaches out for relationships.
Last week I got knocked over by a cold. I was determined to “ride the bus” to get-well-town on my own. I finally confessed to a friend in a text that I kept feeling worse rather than better. She told me to get my tail to the doctor asap. Sure enough, it wasn’t just a cold–I had a sinus infection and needed help with it. My friend brought me truth I needed to face through her words and then she brought me chicken soup {it sure tasted a lot like love}.
That’s the other reason we need people on the journey to our God-sized dreams: We’re going to run into obstacles. We’re going to get hurt, derailed and feel sick at heart sometimes. So we not only need people beside us on the big, exciting days {like the first day of school}, we also need people for the hard times too.
So pause for a moment and consider: Who’s sharing the ride of your life?
Last week the “do what you can” step for your God-sized dream was this: find a God-sized dreams buddy in your everyday life or online. Share your God-sized dream with that person and ask for their encouragement and prayers on your journey. Write a post on your blog about who you chose and why then link it up here on Tuesday. If you don’t have a blog, you can still share in the comments for tomorrow’s post {subscribers, remember to come to www.holleygerth.com}.
If you haven’t found a buddy yet, you still have time. You can even ask for one in the comments section of today’s post then share who you connected with tomorrow. And here’s a little secret: encouraging someone else in their God-sized dream can be a God-sized dream too. So if you have some encouragement to share, see if there’s someone in the comments who could use it.
Research has shown we’re far more likely to move forward with another human being by {and on} our side. Relationships make the wheels on life’s bus go round and round.
I’m so grateful for all of you who are on this wild and wonderful God-sized dreams ride with me. I can’t wait to see where we’re headed with Jesus…
XOXO
Holley
