That Moment You Dare to Uncover Your Dreams

“It’s for you.” I reach out with uncertain hands, hesitant to ever take anything for free.

Looking down, I see it; the decorated poles, empty pews, the white cross up high inside the painted church pictured across this business-sized card…like the one I had just seen a few hours earlier.

“Thank you.” I flip the card in my palm.  And there lies the verse, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed Nothing will be impossible for you.”

The words pierce me deep. Matthew 17:20 reflecting the hope I’d tucked away to do a quiet life, a neatly knit, perfectly orchestrated life…back on the homeland.

Yet, visiting my eighteen-year-old on the island, I remember her faith; quitting job, leaving friends, moving from the boyfriend she had been with for over a year…And oh how my faith looked small. How my grand dreams had somehow gotten lost with time, hardships, just trying to do life over the years.

Where was that dreamer, that leaper, that wildly passionate, in love God-pursuer who was ready to give it all for the Christ I loved more than life?

For, in a world full of cynicism, it doesn’t take long for dreams to get wrapped in plastic personas, wrapped tight somewhere inside a life of “safe”, “perfect”, “let’s just get by” living.

Still, it was on this island I was free to dream again. Dig down deep into that adventurous spirit and give life and soul, and breathe to that dream…to tell the nations about Jesus…

But, I had a home where it rains constantly. Four kids, one not yet adopted. A daughter needing finances to help her follow her God-directed journey to the nations.

And let’s face it…How do you mix God-dreams with reality?  Can’t that be difficult for all of us, sometimes?

I hold the card tight, as if hope itself and life is wrapped inside this 3.5 x 2 plastic card I am holding.

“Thank you, I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” I tell the angel in the store, the one my husband walks right up. The one smiling as if the Son was unshaded in her face.  My sister, my friend, a God-sent blessing in the middle of this crossroads moment I was experiencing.

We talk about God, Christians, the Holy Spirit. Our faith mixes to volcanic proportions.  And I just want to float right off the cement and hug her by the end of our conversation.

And isn’t it funny how we can know people for a life-time and still feel like strangers.  Yet, meet a person and in an instant feel like you know them completely, fully, like you had known them your whole entire life?

“I don’t know how it’s possible” I tell her. This closed trap, this private person that never offers my dreams to much of anyone. Yet here, this stranger….my heart pours out to her so comfortably…

“If God wants it to happen, it will”. Her dark skin, curly hair reminding me of my African American daughter I left back home. I start to ache, shift. I am reminded that my heart has always been for the nations, always finding life and God’s love in diversity, in a world unbound by plastic, barriers, human limitations.

We stand.  Holding hands, there in the un-walled store. She prays for us. I want to tell her what a God-sent she was.  But few words can describe such encounters. For words are often insufficient for graces work, God moving, His divine meetings, for glorious and divine encounters like this was.

So, I leave.  Staring back at her store as I walk. So much more words I could have shared with this sister I have found….but now was not the time, I knew.

It is days. Plane rides. Saying good-byes to my daughter. Finally, back home. I unpack my clothes after soaking in this mix of going and staying.  Trying to cypher, trying to compartmentalize, trying to digest.

I slip my hand into my purse, a few days after.  Just randomness. And there it is. The small card with a church and words.

My mind floods to the buried over dreams, those little girl possibilities of reaching the world for Jesus, that had surfaces so strong back in Hawaii.

I flip over the card. Run my finger across it, reading it again out loud, with emphasis this time, “If you have faith the size of a mustard see Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Faith. Is it smooth like my fingers that brush across this plastic covered paper?  Or a journey of ups and downs?

But then I notice something; a lump, a bump, a little pebble lying under the plastic cover of the card that gripped me constantly…

“What is that?” I question.

“It couldn’t be….could it?”

I wait until my husband comes home. Weighing if sand got caught, or if there is some kind of problem with the card the lady gave me in the store that day.

“But it’s so small. So simple. So useless, really.” I reason, looking at the lump underneath the plastic.

I ask my husband, “Is this what I think it is? Is this really a mustard seed?”

“Of course, what did you think it was?” He says nonchalantly.

My fingers slip across the cover, stop at the bump, touching the tiniest of seeds, nearly the size of the tip of a pen.  And I think of a lifetime of plans that could have already been stopped by my doubt.

A mustard seed. Faith. Nothing impossible for those who believe.

I bow my head. Keep the plastic cover pulled back on the dreams, exposing what little faith I had seen back on the island while visiting my daughter. And although I have no understanding of how I will get there, how God will do what I am dreaming, how my hearts desires and passions will touch all the things I have been ruminating on…

God knows. And His faithfulness always covers our lack of faith.

And there low, I pour out to the Capable One my unbelief, asking God to increase my faith so great to where I know nothing is impossible, that He is the perfecter of these dreams placed deep in me.

And I hope for that mustard seed. Mustard seed faith. Thanking Him for the beautiful sister I met back on the island. And I praise God who has called us, each one of us, according to His good and perfect purposes….

Not because we are full of faith, work hard, or even that any of of even really have anything to offer God…

But because of grace…

Because with a small seed of faith, mountains truly can fall into the sea, a lifetime of safety, can fly wildly and free, farther than even we might be able to hope, think, dream, or imagine.

I come back from Hawaii.  Dreams alive, uncovered, ready to plant.  A God who is faithful.  And the faith of this mustard seed, buried in my hand.