Discovering your dream is absolutely key to eventually living your dream. Most of us coast along in life, doing the things that are necessary to get us through day-to-day living. Then at the end of such a life, we die, never having had our dreams come true. I know because that’s the kind of life I was living when I suddenly found the audacity to ask myself what was the desire of my heart[1]. I had never asked myself that question, so of course, I wasn’t living the life of my dreams.

It’s not that the desire wasn’t there. It’s that I had never articulated my desire. And having never put my desire into words, I had never set any goals for myself. I have come to understand that the only truly impossible goals are the ones never set.

So I stated my desire: to live in Europe. And once that desire was stated, I began doing whatever I could to move myself in that direction. As a housewife in rural Connecticut at the time, there wasn’t much that I could do, but I did what I could: I prayed. And I didn’t just pray, I prayed, using Bible verses to ignite my desire. The first was the verse that had set this all in motion, Psalm 37:4:

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires.

Every day as I read the Bible, I found more and more verses to add to my prayer initiative. And I prayed with conviction, believing that this was God’s invitation, so He had every intention of making it happen.

That’s an important element of dreams: if your dream is achievable without God’s assistance, you would have already done it.

But it still felt like I needed to do something else, so I started taking language classes. I took German. I didn’t end up in Germany, and I never got beyond a few phrases in German, but I have spent time in Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland. I had guessed wrong, but God didn’t count that against me—not at all. I believe that it was my willingness to stretch myself and learn another language that worked in my favor.

Beyond naming the dream, in Life Coaching we learn to honor our discontent. Now, I can’t say that I was terribly discontented. My life in Connecticut was actually pretty good in almost all aspects. I was a Sunday School teacher, a leader of Children’s Church, Storytime reader at the local library, and a volunteer librarian at my son’s elementary school. I also served as a substitute teacher at the local Christian school. All that made me kind of a celebrity among the town’s children. Why would I want to give that up?

But there was something, some small thing of discontent in my life: I knew deep in my heart that I had been made for more than this. Also, my marriage wasn’t great. We were comfortably in a truce at that time, but I can’t say that we were happy. Now, what was moving to Europe going to do about that? I had no idea at the time. So instead of dwelling on my discontents, I embraced the dream. With all my strength, I embraced the dream.

What about you? What’s your dream? Is it one worth embracing with all your might? If not, then you’re probably not dreaming big enough. Many people have lived such small lives that dreaming big is simply too difficult for them to even imagine. In that case, my advice is this: don’t put limits on your dream, on yourself, or on God.

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[1] You can read the whole story in my about page: https://you-can-live-the-dream.com/about/.