Your Everyday… One Day at a Time
How did you spend your day?
Did you cook? And clean? And wipe noses, change diapers, and break up fights? Wash dishes and faces and stinky socks?
Did you drive to work? Fill your cubicle and punch your time card?
Did you wonder…Where is my dream in the middle of “just another day of doing the same old same old”? Where oh where has it gone? Will I ever find my dream?
Don’t despair!
Your dream is right there. Right in the middle of dirty diapers and runny noses. Smack dab in the center of paperwork, and housework, and the everyday humdrum, “isn’t there more to life than this” work.
Everyday, as you faithfully fulfill your daily duties you build the discipline needed to reach your dream. You stretch and stress those muscles you’ll need to do the hard work necessary to reach your dream. As you strive for excellence in even the mundane, you build patience, and perseverance, and the character that will keep you going when your dream is difficult.
Trust me, I understand your impatience.
I remember the hours in my farmhouse kitchen canning peaches. The mundane repetition of slipping wet skins off the slippery fruit allowed my mind to race with story ideas. Stories of naughty children, and courageous heroes, and mysterious strangers, and famous athletes took form and flitted in and out of my thoughts.
Did I write those stories?
Nope!
For years, my job was simply to can those peaches… wash those dishes… train those children.
But…
When the time came, my mind was ready. All those hours of daydreaming stories found life in books, and blogs, and emails, and Bible studies.
The time wasn’t wasted, it was time spent growing, and developing, and discarding, and changing, and editing, and refining.
All in my mind!
As you dutifully cross out another day of faithfulness on the calendar of your life, you are building the stuff of dreams.
So don’t despise the everyday.
Everyday is building your mental resume.
Everyday is preparing your passionate pursuit.
Everyday is developing your daring dream.
Everyday is just what you need to build your future… One everyday at a time!
Keep dreaming,
Megan
Don’t despair when daily duties threaten to overwhelm. Take those everyday “dailies” and make them your training ground for developing the foundation of your daring dreams.
Megan Scheibner 
Hi Megan,
Happy belated birthday 🙂 What if I don’t have a dream….do you think everyone needs that? I had pleeenty of ‘to dos’ before I got married, and had little people. But I sort of shut the door on all of it (none of it, much fitting for a wife/mom), and don’t look ahead much. In the moment!!!
Also, would you consider writing a post on Easter in your home? I appreciated the take on restored relationships. A great idea for this time of year in light of the ultimate restored relationship we are given in Christ.
Erin
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Hi Erin,
Thanks for the birthday wishes! Thanks also for your question. Do I think everyone has dreams? Well, the answer is yes… but that answer is couched in the truth of “then, not now.” Sometimes, it’s not the time to “live” our dreams. Sometimes, we’re in the throes of being a wife, and mommy, and daughter, and sister. There just isn’t time for anything more to DO on our list. However, there’s always time to grow, and dream, and prepare, and formulate plans in our minds.
We’re made in the image of the ultimately Creative God! Really, that’s what dreams are all about. Using the creativity that God has given us as we’ve been made in His image. Some of us create with words. Some create by building community, or providing care, or comfort, or beauty, or music, or by creating with their hands. The list is endless and it endlessly represents God. Ultimately, the goal of our dreams is two-fold… to bring Him glory and to use our dreams to testify of Christ to the world. That testifying can be with words, through service, or silently through listening and loving. That’s why I’m convinced that God has given us all the desire to dream.
It’s interesting that you felt the need to abandon dreams once your roles changed. That was true for me as well. Before my salvation (at age 20) I was a Wild Child. My dreams were self-focused and meant to push the boundaries and shock my audience. In other words, my dreams were worldly-focused and often, self-destructive. My dreams brought glory to the enemy of God… Satan. When God won my heart He also changed my dreams. He filled my heart with big dreams, but big dreams that would point to Him… not me! Some of those dreams have begun to be fulfilled. After years of writing books in my head (books that will never be bound or published) He’s given my a ministry through my writing. Other dreams are on the “maybe” burner. I’d love to open a bed and breakfast type inn where we could have 2-3 parenting couples at a time come for a weekend of conversation, mentoring, hands on kitchen time, and some focused teaching with lots of “couple time” thrown in. That dream has been festering for years and now is in the simple discussion phase… Who knows what God will do! My other dream of perfecting the ultimate organizational system that will revolutionize parenting and homemaking is probably just going to live on in my head. I don’t think God’s done awakening dreams in my heart… my job is to stay open to dreaming and to not let the busyness of our days to close my ears and heart to God’s direction.
What “floats your boat” Erin? Do you love to communicate. Do you love to open your home? Do you provide counsel, or care,or comfort? Do you reach others with your cooking, or humor, or creativity? Those “loves” will become the basis of your dreams. Our little dreams become Big Dreams when God gets involved! Don’t lose the ability to dream. Seeing you dream will model dreaming for your kids. As you show them how God has built dreaming creativity into your life, they will learn to look for it in their own lives. As you share how your dreams are on hold so that you can grow and learn, and in the process, parent them, they will learn patience and steadfastness.
Pray and ask God to show you His dreams for His girl… You! Let me know what He reveals:)
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