Living My Dreams

Dates are a big deal to me; I mark a lot of dates on my calendar year after year.  Not just birthdays and anniversaries, but other significant dates as well.  Yesterday, September 17^th, for example is a BIG date for us.  Yesterday marks the 9^th year anniversary of the day we found out that we were pregnant with our first son!  It was the day I began to live out the dream I’d carried for years of being a mom!

Phil and I met in the fall of 1992 at Sonoma State.  I was a freshman and he had just graduated and was on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  We became good friends.  The story that chronicles our relationship turning from friendship to romantic is long and complex.  Phil loves telling the story, but remember every story has two sides and both should be heard….to be fair!   But during the summer of 1994 we began dating.  Phil was off staff by then and was pursuing overseas missions.

I don’t have the date…although it’s written down somewhere in a prayer journal from college…but early in our courtship we shared our dreams and goals for our futures and career.  Phil shared with me that while he wasn’t sure what his career life would look like, he knew what it wouldn’t be!  Though he had loved doing ministry with college students, he couldn’t see himself returning to that.  Lots of people thought he would go on to become a pastor, but he said that he would never be in traditional church ministry as a pastor.  His degree was in English Literature and a natural path from there would be to get his credential and teach, but that too was not anywhere within his plans.  Within a few days of that conversation, while I was alone praying I had this quiet knowing deep in my heart:  “you’ll marry this man and one day he will be back on staff with InterVarsity, during your life together he will be a teacher and he will be a pastor.”  I had heard from God, but in those days I wasn’t confident enough to speak of such things!  I said nothing of this to Phil.  The idea of him marrying me was a dream too good to come true.  I took from this encounter with God that IF we had a life together it would be a journey of discovery, change, uncertainty and adventure.

My dream of Phil as a husband came true on July 12, 1997 and we began our adventure of married life together.  It has been full of discovery, change, uncertainty and adventure.  It has also been full of unspeakable joy, trials that brought us closer, deeply satisfying love, and incredible freedom.  Phil had felt called by God to return to staff with InterVarsity by the time we were married and we partnered in that ministry for the first 5.5 years of our marriage.  After we went off staff in 2002, Phil got a job as a teacher’s assistant at a non-public school working with children with emotional disturbance.  The plan was to use this as an entry into social work….but God had different plans.  Passion for teaching was awakened in Phil and doors began to open for him at the school.  He ended up going back to college, getting his special education credential and began teaching.  He’s been at that school, first as an assistant, then a teacher and finally as a behavior specialist for 11 years. 

At one point after he had begun teaching I told him, finally, about what I heard from God when we were only dating.  By that point he had fully embraced that dream of being a pastor, but didn’t know how that would happen.  We had also found an amazing group of Jesus Followers called Grace Fellowship Church.  We got increasingly involved in ministry and Phil became an elder/pastor at Grace in 2006.  He continued working at the school, doing ministry at Grace and we carried the dream of full time pastoring in our hearts. 

Our big date of September 17, 2004 fell in the “teacher” period of Phil’s career.  Every baby is a miracle!  This baby however required a creative miracle in my body in order to be born.  Phil and I had dreamed of being parents, we felt like it was part of our destiny, like we were made to be parents of multiple kids.  But after a few years of marriage, around the time we began to ask God if this was His timing for us to begin a family, my body began to show signs of infertility.  For 5 years we faced the horror of “un-explained infertility”.  We were told by multiple doctors that I would never bear children.  In 5 years my body ovulated without medication only 2 times.  There were tests, medication trials, procedures to determine the problem….all leaving the questions unanswered.  It felt like the death of a dream.  Until recently, we referred to this as the hardest thing we had ever faced as a couple.

So you can see why that date is the commemoration of God’s miracle power.  We were pregnant – I’m going to be a mom!  Our son's name means “God heals”.  While we were pregnant with him I had a word from God that he would be my healing.  There was no medical explanation or expectation for this.  The fact that I was able to conceive was shocking enough to my doctors, there was concern over whether or not my extremely irregular hormone levels could sustain the pregnancy and the recommendation of the specialist was to be grateful for this chance for a baby and never hope for another one.  But our baby was born full term, healthy and amazing and after his birth my body was healed.  There have been no medical interventions to pave the way for our subsequent miracles; 2 more sons and now this amazing (but yet unnamed and unborn) son #4!

Yesterday, at various points throughout the day, I marveled at the miracle healing power of God and the dream that I carried for so many years that seemed impossible….but now I’m living it.  Waiting is not at all my favorite thing.  Waiting can eat away at your confidence, it feeds you doubt and questions your motives.  Waiting is costly on your hope; it can rob you of enjoyment, peace and the ability to live in the present.  I dreamt of being a mom since I was a young girl.  Lots of things threatened that dream, but it survived and I waited.  I was 30 when I got pregnant with our first son, the intensely painful waiting period was 5 years long, but it was not wasted time.  I came to be thankful for that time.

It’s hard to say how long we’ve waited and carried our dream of Phil being a full-time pastor….. So long.  It’s been at least 8 years that the dream has been specific to Grace Fellowship and our dearest friends.  All those years of waiting, and now we are on the brink of experiencing our dream coming true.  Phil only has 7 more days at his current job!  The teaching phase of our adventure is ending and the full-time pastor dream is being realized! 

It still feels like a dream…not quite real.  I was thinking last night that dreams are like that.  You carry them, try to imagine what it will feel like to live it, but until you’re really experiencing it you don’t know. 

I am living in my dream of marriage, of being Phil’s wife, and of being a mom.

We are entering into the dream of full-time ministry at Grace.

 I am amazingly blessed!

God places dreams within us; we nurture those dreams with hope, faith and trust.  When they come true we sit in wonder:  how can this be?  Can it be this good?

It is only as good as God is good! 

These are days to celebrate miracles and dreams that come true!  Because God is just that GOOD!