The Development of a Dream

How many of us had a dream job growing up?? Many of us might say astronaut, actor or actress, president, etc. I always wanted to be a performer. I wanted to be the next Selena or J. Lo — singer, dancer, actress. I was all about life on a stage. Then, as I got a little older I started to want to be a teacher. I would play school all the time and make my sister and cousins be my students. I even remember giving them pretend homework. I stuck to that for a while up until about high school. Sometime around then, my dream job began to be influenced by others like my friends and more specifically, my family.

Now to understand that, you’ve got to grasp an overview of my parents. My mother is Puerto Rican and she was the first one in her family to go to college and move to the mainland out of Puerto Rico. My father is white with a heritage is German and Irish, hence I’m loud and I’m stubborn, and probably why I’m a D on the DISC. But important to understand my father’s character is that he was a master sergeant in the US Army for 23 years. He enlisted at 17 after leaving a hectic household, and the Army is what shaped him. My parents weren’t really part of the church until I was around 10. So I wasn’t really "raised" in a Christian household til I got older and my parents got more involved in the church. You can bet that the one thing they made sure I knew though, was “honor your father and mother.”

So in high school, my parents started envisioning the life they dreamed for me. They had this big idea that I could one day be an engineer. They told me that I could work for Disney as an Imagineer if I stayed on the engineering track (and Lord knows I love Disney!). & so to honor them, I started to come into agreement with that vision, and while I was in high school I start to take those harder classes like physics, pre-calc, and take duel enrollment classes. I graduated high school at 17 and got into FAU majoring in Mechanical Engineering. My parents and I devised a plan that I would do 2 years at FAU and then transfer to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, where I’d get my final degree in Aeronautical Engineering and eventually work for a theme park (or even NASA). As parents do, they dream the big dreams.

Everything about the plan was going so great! Until I actually got to college and realized my first semester in, that I was a terrible engineer. I was barely passing any of my engineering classes, completely failed Calc 1 for Engineers, and went into my second semester losing my FAFSA because my GPA had fallen so low. So Spring semester freshman year, I had a dilemma — what in the world was I going to do? I was risking disappointing my parents by choosing a different major, and I risked my mental health and entire college career if I stayed. So right before the withdrawal period I walked into my academic advisors office and said “what is the exact opposite of engineering?” To which she responded “I don’t know, communications maybe?” And I said “great sign me up.” & that’s how I got on the track to get my undergrad degree in communication.

& guess what? I was SOO much better at that. I was actually thriving in my major, between literature courses and public speaking and writing, I was killing it. I was finally in a place where I was developing my own dreams. I could envision myself working in public relations, or after I picked up a business minor, working as a marketing exec. I realized that though my family truly meant well for me, I had to find what was best for me. I had to dream a new dream.

Now many of us may have experienced something like this and we might initially see it as a waste of years of preparation. But what you’d be missing from the experience is the beauty of a restart.

When our iPhone doesn’t work the way it should or starts to get glitchy what do we do? We restart it. It doesn’t mean that we give up on the phone. We accept that a restart needed to happen, and then continue on. Why don’t we do the same for ourselves? Why do we become so much harder on ourselves when we need to reset? We start accepting the world’s view that we’ve been rejected, or that we aren’t as good as we once were. But if even intricately designed technology fails, why cant we flawed humans fail, and try again?

Sometimes we can begin to believe that the Bible is outdated and doesn't apply to our lives today. But the more I study, the more I realize that the stories of old so beautifully intertwine with what we experience today. In the first book of the Bible we meet Joseph. A young man who had a dream and shared it with his family, only to have life turn out pretty difficult after that, and have the need to restart over and over again. Let's read the start of his story.

Genesis 37: 1-11

'Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob’s family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. '

Joseph had this big bold dream given to him by God, but what’s important to know is that there’s tests all along the way. Joseph’s first test is rejection. Joseph is the favorite, the most loved, really because he’s the second youngest but also that he’s the first son of the woman who his father Jacob really loved, Rachel. & so he learn that Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colors and because of this favoritism, all of his brothers hated him.

At 17 years old, God speaks to Joseph. & that in the dream he and his brothers are out in the field working, and all of the sheaves of grain that his brothers bound up, they all started bowing down to him. Now Joseph goes and tells his brothers this, and then tells them about another dream he has with the same idea. Joseph’s brothers were obviously furious and hated him even more than they did before. Can you imagine if your youngest sibling said they were going to rule over you? You’d be like “yeah right keep dreaming.” & so Joseph was immediately rejected on his dream.

Even before we read about the rest of Joseph’s life and what unfolded we have to pause and understand the rejection that Joseph felt didn’t stop him from moving forward. He might not have fully understood his God dream, but he dreamt it anyway. God was still working in his life and setting him up for good.

I want you to know that even if you’ve experienced rejection or failure in your life, God is in the midst of it. If you’ve been rejected, it's probably because God has a new favor on your life. Sometimes until you appreciate a “no,” you can’t always appreciate a “yes.” So even if someone were to walk up to you today and give you your dream job or your dream family, would you be able to identify it, would you really be able to steward it properly right now?

Now as I’ll get to share more of my story with you over time you’ll learn that even after I graduated from FAU I didn’t get a job in Communications. I would ultimately end up going back to school for teaching, & then later going into ministry. But it wasn’t until I had done all of those things, that I realized I was being set up by God. That my dream from even a young age, was continuously being developed over time.

How we handle rejection matters to the God Dream.

Handling Rejection in right way, will always lead you to the right place. So for some of you right now that might be deciding where in life you belong. Can I tell today that that’s okay? Can I encourage you to keep discovering who you are. Maybe you need to start back at square one and ask yourself "what is the dream that God has given me?" Don’t be afraid to dream something that is bigger than you. Bigger than your parents. Bigger than your past experiences. A God dream will always be more than you could ask, think, or imagine. But know that your dream will be tested. You’ll only find out whether you can trust God’s plan for you when you’ve traversed those hurdles and experience all the difficulty. When you go hiking, you’re gonna be tired. You’re gonna probably want to give up. But whether you’re hiking or just doing life, you have to decide that you’re going to fight, and walk into what God has for you.

So let’s be available for God to have His way even if it looks different than we planned. Let’s be okay when we fail because we know that we’re being set up for something better. & let’s keep dreaming, and discovering who God truly wants us to be.