2new ~ Staying focused

If you’ve taken time to Focus this week, you’ve discovered some good things distracting you from your most important goals and even your dreams. Now you know why didn’t get as far as you hoped or planned in 2012.  I do too, and I’m going to tell you why I got distracted.

During the Dream week, I put my personal dream into words I’m a little hesitant to share. After all, if you say you’re training for a marathon, everyone’s waiting to see you run it. Once you declare it, you run the risk of failure or embarrassment.  No I’m not going to run a marathon; that’s not a dream for me.

I first shared my dream with a classroom full of first graders in a classroom overlooking an endless corn field. Why did I share with them?  I suppose because children are dreamers who still believe things like unicorns and spaceships and fudge mountains might be true somewhere.  When I told them my dream, they all gasped and smiled and held my hand and looked at me like they totally believed in me. That was 23 years ago, but dreams usually take a while to take shape. I haven’t given up. If you could put on your “first grade face” for just a couple minutes, I think I can tell you my dream.

I dream of teaching truth through writing and speaking to influence people around the world for the gospel. (I didn’t include that gospel part when I shared with my class …)  I told them that some day I wanted them to go into a bookstore and see a book with “Mrs. Sanders” on it. And they believed.

So this week as I’ve narrowed my Focus, I drew my target that Card #4 directed me to.  I wrote “Write a book?” in the center as the next piece of my dream.  Then around it I wrote all the things that distracted me from realizing my dream in 2012 and might keep me from it in 2013.  Here’s a little bit of my list:

• hospitality in our home
• counseling with women
• serving at a women’s shelter
• taking Jacob to music
• event planning
• worrying about problems
• staff meetings
• going to the kids’ cross country events
• teaching a Bible study
• answering email
• writing a Galatians study
• ministering internationally
• helping Jo with college applications
• spending time with my man
• laundry
• coffee with friends
• watching Downton Abbey with the fam

Funny, but most of what keeps me from my dream is good. Most of what keeps me from my dream isn’t something I want to change or let go of.  In fact, some of the “extra things” represent dreams themselves, really important dreams, dreams I’ve given priority to in my life. A lot of it is necessary.  I scribbled and I pondered and I prayed and I listened, and I found:

• Even dreams have seasons.  After all, a fudge mountain CAN’T exist in summer!
• Just because it waits doesn’t mean it’s dead.
• Much of what fills my life is part of the dream or a dream in itself.
• God delights in what surrounds the dream, as much as in the dream itself.

My first graders are old enough now to own Kindles and shop on Amazon, so thanks to the helpful encouragement of a friend, I’m going to take a step towards my dream and finish an Ebook this year!  That’s my marathon, so hold me to it. Honestly, I’ve been working on it for over a year, and it just needs to get DONE.  I’ve let other good things crowd it out, and now I need to just get that baby done.  And speaking of babies, I can’t wait to share what the Ebook is about and what inspired me to write it!

In some other season I hope to dust off the book proposals I’ve written and outlines on napkins in coffee shops.  Maybe this blog will even give birth to a book some day, but for now, I want to get the first Ebook finished and “out there,” while helping my own sweet girl launch to college, teaching alongside my husband, and sitting in the car waiting for guitar lessons from my boy who was a first grader too long ago.

After all, when the time is right to go somewhere else, I’m pretty sure there’ll be a unicorn there to take me. 😉

Next week, I’ll help you Plan steps to stay Focused on the Dream God has for you in this season.

Were you surprised by anything in your life distracting you from your dream?