Dare to Dream

Over the past year or two I have started to come to grips with one of my worst flaws, my failure to dream. Over the course of my life I've the constantly been the one to stifle people's hopes and dreams with pragmatic thoughts like "how will that actually work?". I almost feel like I've gone through the 12 steps as I repent and struggle with my addiction to the status quo. It's been a long journey but I feel like I'm protruding through the darkness as I experience days where my dreams run wild with reckless abandon in a flurry of imagination.

A few weeks ago I was the typical husband as I waited impatiently outside Jo-Ann Fabrics for my wife to finish shopping. While I was waiting I walked across the street to watch a young boy repeatedly drop into a bowl of a skateboard park. The boy was probably 7 or 8, a mere 4' tall or so, and the bowl he was tackling was probably 10-12' tall. I couldn't get over how daring this young man was, but even more striking to me was how encouraging his parents were as they looked on. The boy would fall sometimes but always got right back up and tried again. But even as their son was endangering himself, the parents remained calm and seemed to keep encouraging him to take chances and keep trying.

I deeply desire to be a person who encourages the people around me (including my own future children) to be daring, to take risks, and to try things out of their comfort zones. I want to dream of a new way of living and I want to empower others to do the same. In the words of Shane Claiborne, I want to "dream big, live small, and love loudly."