reality girl

I tend to be a high-expectations person.  I dream big and then cry hard when the dream doesn’t work out.  I have had to learn to temper this with good doses of reality.

Mr. Fantastic is the opposite.  Maybe I should call him Mr. Reality.  He always has a firm grasp on what is really possible.

Over the years I have accused him of unleashing this power a little too fiercely.  He is king of the land of Wait a Minute.  I dream of a trip to Hawaii, he shows me our bank account.  I dream of adopting from China, he points to our four young children and the massive church responsibility we carry and my already fragile sanity.  I call this “dream-squashing”, he calls it a reality check.  Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

Last night, though, we watched this old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where they really go to Italy.  It was gorgeous there.  I longed to see it in real life. At the end, he looks at me and asks, “Do you think we’ll ever go to Italy?”

“No,” I firmly answer.

Then I wondered, Who does this dream squasher think he is?  I laid that dream down ages ago, when he showed me how much money was in our retirement account (almost zero).  How can he stick a carrot out on the end of a stick when I have now accepted that that exact carrot is meant to be frozen so that we can make carrot soup one day when our four children are almost starving and in need of sustenance?

Sigh….  I have become a big, boring Reality Girl who is afraid to dream.

Because I am Reality Girl, I know I have no actual super powers, so I do nothing, and consequently I am the most boring super hero of all time. My comic books have sold by the nil.

Then I realize that reality never stopped Jesus from doing the miraculous.  When did I start thinking that serving Him would be all bread and water and never tea and cake?

So here I go, tail between my legs, running to God to ask Him to write His dreams on my heart.  I want to be the girl who dreams again.


Bye bye Reality Girl!

Do you have dreams?  What is the “tea and cake” that you are waiting and longing for? Has reality brought you down, or have your realized dreams lifted you up?