When Your Dream Feels Too Risky

{This post was written before the Oklahoma tornadoes. As one with family there, my heart is broken over the devastation. Please join me in praying for those impacted.}

Have you ever gone bungee jumping?  Sky-diving? Zip-lining? Extreme roller coaster riding?  I done them all but the sky diving (which I hope to do one day).  I love the thrill.  When I bungee jumped (in a very controlled setting), the rope slowly cranked up and you could hear it churning as slowly I rose higher and higher and then, momentarily suspended in mid air in silence, whoosh……drop.  Stomach in throat.  And then exhilaration. 

On Tuesdays, I link up with Holley Gerth’s God-sized Dream Team and we write about our dreams.  Today’s topic was, “What part of your dream feels the riskiest?” 

I read that question and immediately pictured me strung up in all that bungee gear awaiting the drop.  Momentarily doubting my risk-based analysis. 

 Merriam-Webster defines risk as, “1: possibility of loss or injury ; peril. 2: someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard.”  Loss.  Injury. Peril. Hazard.  Those words are enough to send shivers up your spine.  But do you know another definition of risk listed, there at the bottom?  “To venture upon; take the chance of.”

I love that one.  I know that one.  It’s my God-sized dream.  It’s not about loss.  Or peril.  It’s the opportunity to venture upon something God-sized and the gift to take a chance on this whole God-sized package. 

Sometimes it still feels perilous though.   It feels as though you’re up there on that crane strapped to a bungee cord that you are certain will tear.  You can almost hear the rope stretching beyond what it can hold.  You keep waiting for it to give way and then you’ll plummet to the ground and lay there shattered and broken.  You think the dream can’ t be worth this.  All this worrying and anxiety.  All this…RISK. 

I don’t know what feels the riskiest to me in this God-sized dream journey to write for and speak to working women who are seeking something more.  Women who want to know God but aren’t sure what that means.  Women that want to have faith but are trying to figure out how that works in the hulabaloo of life.  Those are the people I want to sit with and have coffee and share about the foundation that can anchor them in the storm.  I don’t know if this dream will result in me sitting in a coffee shop with 5 faith-seeking women or standing on a stage sharing with 5,000.  No. Idea.  I’ve stopped trying to guess what the picture is 5 weeks from now, much less 5 years. 

Regardless of the who or the how or the where of the community than I get to write for or speak with, it all feels the same risky.  The risk that my struggles won’t resonate.  The risk that I’ve got it wrong.  The risk that it’s already been done and I’m just a poor imitation.  The risk that I will mess it up.  Oh that last one, that risk scares the dickens out of me.  I’ve seen big spectacular falls. God-sized dreams that were successfully derailed by the one who tries to derail God-sized dreamers.  And it wasn’t just the dreamer that fell splat from that bungee cord.  The dreamer took down a bunch of people right along on that fall.  And the pavement was bloodied with the stains of the fallen. 

That is the biggest scariest risk of them all.  The fall.  The mess up.  The brokeness. 

You know what I heard whispered into that fear?  It’s alright.  You are already broken.  You are already fallen.  You are already messed up.  That is precisely why I called you to this dream.  To show what happens after the fall. 

Oh.  See there?  The dream.  That’s the adventure.  That’s the chance.  Becoming vulnerable enough to reveal my cracks and brokeness and then letting the light of my faithful God shine through them. What does Isaiah call it… “A display of His splendor.”  The broken jar is more lovely than the unbroken one because of the light that shines through the cracks. 

And the risk?  Vulnerable is still risky.  But the risk feels more like adventure and less like loss when you’re standing on solid ground and not suspended mid-air.  This dream?  It’s after the fall has already happened.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  II Corinthians 4