Bucket List

I have been spending a lot of time lately reevaluating my life. I have said before that I want to spend this next year and the rest of my life for that matter learning new things and rediscovering the things I loved in the past. I started writing things down that I wanted to do and before I knew it I had  a pretty good bucket list. If you don't have one I recommend that you start one. It started out with a few things like traveling to certain places and as my list grew I began to add more complicated things. It started out as something that I thought would be just for fun and then something weird happened. Some of the dreams on my list started coming true and others (some of them really big) I'm starting to see come together right before my eyes. It may be a while before I see them play out but knowing that the pieces are coming together is awesome to see. Now at first I thought it was kind of silly to have a list of such big wishes and dreams. Although some of the things on my list would impact other people most are selfish wishes and for a moment I started to feel bad.  After all shouldn't I be more focused on God and on his dreams for me. On the world around me and the millions of people suffering and hurting. The answer to that is yes I should be focused on that and I am but at the same time I realized that God wants our dreams to come true. Psalm 37 says "take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this." and then in John 14 we are told that we can ask anything not just somethings but anything in His name and He will give it to us. I have a couple of things on my bucket list that are pretty far fetched. I didn't tell anyone about them I just started praying that God would take me down this journey so that I could show others what it meant to truly live. I call it legacy living. I want to show people what it means to live fully in each moment and part of that is doing crazy things and dreaming crazy dreams. Now I won't say just yet what kind of big dreams I have because thats part of the fun of seeing God work in my life.

 Psalm 37 also says "be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him". Part of the fun is that I don't set out to accomplish all of these dreams on my own but instead I wait patiently and then when God thinks I'm ready he opens a door. There are so many things that can stand in the way of our dreams if we let them. Even after God opens a door I can think of a hundred reasons that something could get in the way but with God and a little hard work the sky is the limit. Randy Pausch in his last lecture said that "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something".

I think in my case the brick walls are not only there for me to show how bad I want something but they are also there to show the world that its not me alone making my dreams come true. God wants so much for us to be happy and to enjoy what he has given us but by not asking we are limiting what he can give us. The day I was told that one of my biggest dreams really might come true I felt God wrap his arms around me and hug me as if saying "you go girl...Keep the dreams coming because we are going to do great things together. You dream it and I'll make it happen". Now several things on my list are pretty simple such as falling in love with hobbies that I enjoy all the time and just haven't had time or money for. One of those things is photography and here I am with a brand new camera that I could have never afforded on my own and a new macro lens. Just the other day we took our kids to the zoo. We have been trying to do that for over a year but each time we plan it something happens and one of the children get sick. Out of no where this weekend my husband said lets go to the zoo not knowing that I had added it to my list. I played the drums for the first time in 12 years a couple weeks ago and it was so much fun leading me one step closer to checking another thing off my list. In a couple of months I'm going to get to do something I have always dreamed of doing and I can't wait for it to happen so I can tell you all about it. Each time I mark something off its as if God is saying good job we did it but you need to dream bigger, I have so much to show you and we have so much to show this world. That my girlfriends is legacy living! Me and God, hand in hand, planning to show the world that living for him doesn't have to me sitting in a pew its so much more than that. Its making every moment count. Its dreaming the impossible because Jesus said in Matthew 19:26 "with man this is impossible, but with God ALL things are possible". Thats what dancing in the rain is all about. Its about learning how to live your life in a way that pleases God but also in a way that helps show the world what God is really like. He wants to give you so much but he can't do it if you don't ask him. So make a bucket list, ditch your umbrella and come and dance with me in the rain!