My Little World

I don't have pictures.

But I can picture it well.

I spent so much time there, I should be able to.

Healer. Idealist.

Naive. Impractical.

Call it what you will and say what you want about it, but -- good or bad, annoying or endearing --there can be little doubt. I was a dreamer.

My backyard.

Almost black separated from my neck by soft, powerful wind. I loved the feeling. I closed my eyes as back and forth I flew-- and I was flying. Closing my eyes, I could be anywhere, and I loved to go there. If I didn't see that I was just a mere 2 feet from the ground, I could be 200 feet above it. There, in the safety of what could be, I dreamt.

Of things like singing Celine's "Because You Loved Me" to my teachers at 5th grade graduation because I appreciated them (I roll my own eyes at that one). Of marrying Brandon the (future) pilot and feeling the same soft, powerful breeze during a jaunt in a Wright Bros. style plane. Of opening an orphanage at my house and pushing other kids on the swing in my backyard that I didn't feel deserving of. I dreamed of the days I would have straight teeth and be really beautiful-- not just the kind my parents assured me I was. I hated thinking of the day my dog, Oreo, wouldn't be around (she was the one who cared to join me in the backyard of my greatest hopes) but I knew she would most likely go before the coveted day that I could be a teacher and a real difference-maker, so I was oddly okay with the thought (people, I was weird).

I played in the shed at the side of the house, where my Dad's sideyard was constantly being renovated, added to or arranged. I stood at the side gate like it was my front door and invited the pretend world in. Of course, I wished to do the same for the real world, too, but the real world was just harder to get a grip on. I couldn't lasso reality to my sideyard for a cup of tea. Real people didn't understand the little world in my head. Pretend people, on the other hand, didn't hesitate to accept the invitation.

I had myself convinced that in my real world, as in my fake world, I would be okay growing up and having only a shed. As long as it could be mine and I could do what I wanted with it, I would do everything I could to make it a home and would share it with others however I wished. Somewhere between the flowerpots and lawn mower was a place for whoever came along. 

I did, of course, grow out of this. I would have to, right? It's unrealistic. Too perfect. Impractical. I learned that people might be looking for their place in life, but that didn't mean they wanted the same things. I learned I didn't have a place for everyone and despite my imagination, I couldn't invite them into my ideal world because, well, it didn't exist.

Just to me.

To most everyone else, it seemed, the kind of love that keeps no record of wrongs, that isn't easily angered, that hopes and trusts and doesn't delight in evil (the kind I was always taught came from God and should be my aim) is mostly just a great idea. They wouldn't expect it of me and I, in turn, shouldn't get too eager to experience it.

Except for that I saw it. In fiction I saw it with the Boxcar Children (this could be where the shed dreams came from), in Father of the Bride and 7th Heaven. And while I knew that was fiction and grew to find it laughable, I had real life examples to compare it to. Surely I wasn't too out of touch with reality when there were historical examples: Harriet Tubman and Annie Armstrong and Dixie Jackson and Lottie Moon and Princess Diana. But then came the awful truth that history isn't always what it seems.

Well, then, I saw it at home. And that wasn't romanticized or fake. I knew because I lived it. My parents consideration of each other and us was real. My daydreams weren't about escaping harsh reality-- they were all about figuring out where to go from a good reality. The sky was my limit-- who would I be? How could my adulthood build on the childhood I loved so much?

The only way for life to get any better was to dream up even more. Realistically, though, I didn't think life could get any better. So I just lived it. I stopped dreaming the childish dreams for more because everywhere I looked, I had what others kept saying they dreamed of.

Other times what other people dreamed of, I didn't want to have-- sex, drugs, alcohol, parents out of their business, big popular parties. The dreams I dreamed made me weird. The life I lived made me weird. So even though my dreams were born of wanting to be better and love deeper, I didn't dare impose them on other people. I would just wait out my days until I got prettier and more effective in making the differences I only secretly dreamed of. The home I dreamed up and the man I loved would come along because why wouldn't they? I had what I needed, everything else would just fall into place. God included.

Then I reached high school and figured that God shouldn't just fall into place in my life. Or, rather, that He wouldn't. Dreaming about Him and what he could do in me was not enough. I had to believe Him to do it, and that was going to require more than just waiting around living the life that simply was.

About one morning a week during senior year, I left for school 30 minutes early. As the sun rose over the hills, I drove down by the river. I sat in the grass or walked the beaten path and literally, out loud, asked God where to go. I just couldn't believe that the dreaming was for naught. And I couldn't believe that my privilege was for me to just live the way I wanted.  In living for myself, I felt selfish for wanting more. But it also felt wrong to not want more.

So I walked and I sat and I cried over the way my life was so good I didn't necessarily have to dream-- I could just coast. But I hated that thought. I hated that my life was good, but not necessarily Godly.

The more I read about God and the things He repeatedly tells his people are possible, the more I felt that my dreams were never simply the frivolous wishes of a naive schoolgirl. Not all of them anyway. So I had to start deciding which ones I would hold onto. The pilot husband could go, I didn't need the Wright Bros. plane and I didn't have to blossom into the most beautiful woman-- or at least how beautiful a pale, freckle-faced, long-nosed girl could become.

The dreams about the love and the people and contentedness? Well, I would rather those be simply dreams. Then I could dismiss them and not bother with the seeing them come to reality. Then I could live and let live and not bother people with my stupor.

But the promises of the Bible-- the community, the redemption, the peace, the challenges that will one day be met with reward-- those aren't dreams. They are real. Sure they upset reality. Sure it bothers people to think of living selflessly and contentedly because it's not how we actually live. But it doesn't make those things impossible.

I'm old enough now to know that though humility and harmony are not impossible, they are unlikely to ever be the order of this reality in which I remain.

I don't have pictures.

But I can picture it.

The world in which my dreams aren't impractical or naive. They aren't unlikely or upsetting. The world where everyone does have a place and people don't keep a list of wrongs and hopes aren't crushed and trust isn't betrayed and love never fails.

It's coming.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (I Corinthians 13:12)