Why didn't I act on the dreams I had when I first became mentally ill? I've never really known. I now believe I didn't act because something in me wanted a greater life. A life I couldn't know when I first started getting sick. A life that required bypassing the dreams I had back then.
Now,at age 59, I see evidence of a greater life starting to grow. I see the necessity of bypassing the dreams I had at twenty. The part of us that dreams great dreams is hard to discern in our youth. It's there, but to see what's possible in life we must travel through decades. We must allow God to develop us into the glorious vision that is invisible when starting our a life after the first rebirth of our soul.
Sometimes all we see when we're young is a fruit growing on someone else's tree. All we know is that we want to bear that fruit on our own. But we have no idea how to, or what to do to bring it forth. As our life decays into our growing illness we panic over the loss of our old life. We find ourselves holding on to our dreams with desperation. We have dreams, but we're making no effort to fulfill them.
We may reach for something great, or try to do what someone else did. But we fail. We crash and burn. Our old life becomes wreckage, and our mind is now full blown sick. We have no idea how to make it through life in our condition. Ironically, God now has His opportunity to rebuild us, and our life. He succeeds by creating a life where it possible for us to bear the fruit we desired in our youth.
A second chance comes and we're prepared to claim it. We're prepared to realize our new dream, which becomes God's dream for us. It is magnitudes larger than the one we had when we were getting sick.
Through a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ, He makes us fit for long stretches of time. As we learn to relate to Him, day in and day out, we may realize this new dream. The dream we were afraid of doing at twenty is now something we're willing to do.
Because of our fitness in spirit, mind, and countenance, we are unafraid. We can see Jesus has engineered us for the benefit and gain of others, and we follow our Lord wherever He leads us. Even into the very center of the world.