I stepped into the event center and took in the view. The people were setting up their booths. Hundred of empty chairs sat around tables. My moving artwork was all over the walls.
The sun was getting ready to rise.
“Do you have everything you need?”
This was the question I was asking people as I wandered around the room. I didn’t know what else to do. I had never done this before. This wasn’t my job, but I said I would be here. I was expecting something here.
I arrived at the dream booth. There was the president of an insurance corporation. And with him were the people who interpreted the dreams.
“Do you have a dream today?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t usually have dreams. Or if I do, I don’t remember them.”
A few seconds passed. And suddenly, I remembered. “Oh! I have one. It’s only a few seconds, but I’ll tell it anyway.
I was in a hospital. Getting ready to leave. I had six kids with me. I opened the glass doors and headed to the parking lot. They all followed me. We got into the car and were about to leave when I suddenly realized two things:
Two of these kids were not mine.
And two of my own kids were
missing.
The president, the filmmaker, and the apprentice. They considered my dream. And finally, one of them spoke.
“In dreams, children often represent talents. It sounds like you have many talents. But you are trying to hold onto talents that belong to someone else… to the neglect of your other talents. You must return these two ‘children’ to their real ‘parent.’
“And you must bring your children back.”
I was skeptical. I wasn’t spiritual like them. I was logical. But this appealed so much to my logic that it was hard to deny. This was my dilemma. Some things were in place, but some of my greatest dreams — I had lost them a few years back. I was wounded. Disillusioned. I had brushed myself off since that time, but what of these “children?”
I brush off a lot of things.
That was a quarter of a year ago. I was sleeping for a while, but I remembered it again this Sunday. What have I done with this dream in three months?
“You can lose a job. You can lose a career. But you can never lose your calling.”
Those were the words spoken to me by a man who seemed to build my world back up around me. Where would I be without him? He had come to my city to transform it. And oh, has he!
I was called. I pursued that calling. I was left in ruins.
I had to move on. But I clung to the idea that, if I moved on, it could only honor my past, and would only make sense of my life, if I could still pursue that calling in my career.
So I made coffee. I met a man and he loved me and he left me. And I took his place as he left. I listened to the man and started a company. And God used it. He did. But I hear children crying and it is distracting and it is hard to focus and it is hard to do my job well when people are hurting and I can do something about it.
And mothers make sacrifices for their children. And they hurt. And family comes first.
And families were only meant to grow
