The Night My Future Dreams Came True

Each month, hundreds of texts speed between my phone and that of my best friend, Katie. I am not addicted to texting in general but when it comes to keeping up with my alter-ego who lives near Atlanta, daily conversations via text are an absolute must. It is my one vice, if you can call it that. Those of you who have long-distance best friends will understand how a person who lives half a nation away can know you as well if not better than some family members. If Katie takes a technology detox for the weekend or I'm out of cell reception for a few days, there is a world of business to catch up on when we return into communication. And not your legendary white-girl emoji wars or dumb chick-flick quote wars. We have real things to discuss. Trips to plan. Georgia State Senate sessions to cover. Parties to report on. Fashion advice to dispense. Prayer to be requested. An ear to which we can vent. Art and history to discuss. Movies to recommend and then shout over. In an only half-joking way, Katie is my sanity.

But this is not a post about how much I value my sassy, Southern friend because much as I wouldn't mind soliloquizing, you mightn't enjoy hearing it. Just for fun, I asked Katie to describe in three sentences her dream life six years from now: where she'd be, what she'd be doing, who she would have in her life. Then I did the same for my own life, rattling off the first mental picture that came to mind:

“I will be my own version of Elizabeth Burke: a 28 year-old Mama to a little girl with light brown curls (age three) and an auburn-haired baby boy, perhaps ten months old. I will live in an 1800's farmhouse with a husband who works somehow with his hands. My writing will have fallen a little by the wayside but I will still keep it up and I will spend my days making beauty out of everything: food, my home, the people around me, my art, my words; I will keep a blog of all this and photograph the food and share the stories and make a quiet place for frantic readers to rest a while.

That will be me. In three sentences. If I went on longer I could tell you of the children's books I write and the roses twining up the trellis which I jealously tend, and the little streets in the town nearby where I take airings with my babies.”

Katie and I both know our lives in six years will probably be quite different than we think they ought to be from our vantage point pre-2021. That dream I share above is a fond dream but I am conscious that it might not be my reality. That there will be something different and something better that I can't see from here. But for now, the dream is beautiful and tantalizing and last night it felt so ridiculously close. I knew our game was dangerous but I didn't realize how dangerous until I spoke that dream into being, sent the text, and watched the scenario play out in my head.

It was almost as if I stood on the other side of a pane of glass separating me from the life of which I dream. If I could break through the glass—even tap on it and get the attention of the players on the other side—surely, surely they would notice and see me and invite me in. The little girl with soft brown curls would light up with joy to see her Mama, and the baby boy would giggle, lift chubby arms and bring them down chubby-handed on the soft bread dough left to rise in the sunlight shifting through the wavy glass of the old windows. But I'm here, in the first few months of 2015, and that vision is only a fancy of mine. Six years will tell whether those good, good things are my good, good things, or whether they are only fancies. Frustration curved through my breast-bone and hurt me. The feeling was not simple discontentment, out of which I can easily talk my myself, but impatience. I could see, hear, taste, feel that six-year dream through the glass and by George I wanted to break the pane. I refused Katie's invitation to browse Pinterest with her and send each other photographic evidence of that dream life and instead went up to bed. There, I pulled my heavy, battered Bible off my nightstand onto my lap and breathed a prayer for the families of the 21 martyrs in Libya whose hearts are aching. Yes, my heart ached with the impatience to see the underside of tomorrow, to flip the future on its back and see what it has in store for me, but their hearts are breaking with the fact that their husband/brother/son/best friend was severed from this life by the sword of an enemy of our Christ. I flipped the pages of my Bible to the Psalms, to my sweet-spot in the Scriptures where no matter what I'm feeling, I am assured of finding comfort. This night, I found my eyes running over the familiar words of Psalm 16. Just running ahead. Running and running and running ahead like my mind. Not comprehending, not understanding, not trying to understand. Just running because it did not want to wait for fear of missing out.

I pulled my Bible closer, read the words aloud, smoothed the crinkled pages with impatient fingers and took it slower. Through the opening plea for God's protection, through the assurance of the end of wickedness, through the declarations of love to the Lord. And at the very end, deep in the back-verses of this old-faithful Psalm, I found my answer:

“You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps. 16:11)

I curled into the warmth of my bed and smiled at the arrest of my heart which had finally stopped running, finally started listening. Oh, the irony of Christ! The impatience driven into my chest by my six-year dream was foolish but not wrong. I saw myself now as the curly-headed little girl in my own dream, clinging to her Papa's hand and begging, “Hurry up, please! We'll be LATE.”

As a child, did you ever hurry ahead of the adults, perhaps toward a scene of infinite pleasure and delight, only to realize quite pink-faced that you didn't know the route and might, perhaps, miss the “Way-In” by insisting on taking the lead? My current impatience was stemming from excitement rather than discontent just as the little girl's frantic tugging on her Papa's hand stems more from the glossy allure of promised joys than any real crossness with her parent. Much as if my Papa had settled his big, daddy-hand over my tangled curls and told me we'll get there when we get there, God's word settled on my heart.

He will show me the path of life. (Application: I can't find my way to the future alone)

In His presence is fullness of joy. (Application: My joy depends on teaming up with a Traveling Companion.)

At His right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Application: the pleasure and delight I crave and anticipate can only be found by tucking my little, sweaty fist into his great, calloused palm and agreeing to take it at His pace.)

Boil down my six-year dream and what essential components do I find? A joy in appreciating and creating beauty. A full and loving life. Pleasure taken in simple things. All the components I am promised in God's own living and breathing Word if I'll have a little patience, please. He has promised me joy and purpose and pleasure which is the core of what I want. For though the particulars of God's plan might look very different than the particulars of my six-year dream, I am promised the heart of it. And for that matter, the heart of it requires no waiting. It can be and is mine already:

A joy in appreciating and creating beauty.

A full and loving life.

Pleasure taken in simple things.

Then, for heaven's sake, the future is today and today is tomorrow and maybe this is the thing on which real fulfillment hinges: that we ought never to hurry ahead because there is no ahead just yet. Ahead is chance and a gamble and an imagination. Life is only real in the exact moment we hold it in our hands and to rush ahead would be to leave all the realness behind to chase vapors.

Flushed with the simple GENIUS of this revelation, I texted Katie the verse and an explanation with as eager a spirit as when I'd texted her the six-year dream. And then? Saccharine as such an admission seems, I went to sleep with a heart as quiet and full as if the six-year dream had been dropped in my lap in all its pretty fullness. And really, in a way, it had been. May we all learn to walk in pace with the only One who knows the real Way-In.