What’s your wildest dream? If you could do anything in the world, what would it be? Seriously, think about it. No money limitation. No one telling you no. Only yourself holding you back. You would jump at the opportunity, right? You might be terrified it’s not real, and it might seem too good to be true, but you would overcome any obstacle and you would do it.
I did it. I had my wildest dream come true. As I was graduating college, I was whole-heartedly devoted to Jesus. I wanted to travel the world, serve the disadvantaged, adventure through different continents and tell people about Jesus. The idea of the World Race was presented to me by a friend who graduated the year before me. It was 11 countries, 11 months, backpacking the world and serving in disadvantaged areas telling the unreached about Jesus. Sign me up! A $15,000 fundraising goal was completed within a miraculous time frame, and I was on my way.
Recommended for you
I hate talking about this. If you know me, you know it’s a subject and a time in my life I tend to avoid addressing. But sometimes healing comes from tackling a past memory head on, so I’m going to be vulnerable here.
Here I was, doing everything I ever wanted. Our first stop was Ecuador, and I was living with a family in Portoviejo. Not exactly the traveling I imagined, and not exactly "Instagrammable." I was constantly sick, my body wasn’t adjusting to the food well and we were doing manual labor. This is what I signed up for?
I’ll give myself credit. I pushed through. I kept a positive attitude. An emergency room trip – aka a trip to an old laundry room where I sat in a lawn chair while my friend held my IV bag and I vomited into a bucket of used needles – broke me a little. My body was telling me that it didn’t want to be there, but dammit this was my dream and I wasn’t going to let my body tell me otherwise!
That is until month two in Peru, where my appendix decided it wanted to burst. Surgery in a foreign country forced me to return home to recover, but I was not about to let this be the end of my dream. You have to work for your dreams, right? There are obstacles but you can always overcome them, right?!
I reunited with my team in Chile and I not so slowly lost the vision of my “dream.” I was miserable. My body wasn’t digesting food; I was weak, tired and just done. I was mad at God for dangling this dream in front of me and then snatching it away. I didn’t want to serve him anymore. I was only sure of one thing: I didn’t want to be there anymore. Not only was my body telling me no, but my mind and my heart were finally agreeing. I was at peace with my decision, and I returned to America with a heavy heart - yet sure I was doing the right thing.
I wish I had a happy ending and could say I returned home and my life was sunshine and daisies. But the loss of a dream takes a grieving process, and I’m still in that. I still look back with resentment and bitterness, and I haven’t been able to get my relationship with God back on track since then. I tried working for a church and failed miserably there too. I then realized that ministry is not where I belong.
I am figuring out where and who I want to be. I do still believe that every season has a purpose. Dreams change and people change. It’s OK to move on. You are defined by your failures only in the way that they shape you to be a stronger and wiser human. You are allowed to give up on a dream, as long as you are always chasing the next one.
No more fancy slogans. No more cliché lines. No more motivational posters. I’m learning how to accept that a part of growing up is the messy process of dreaming big, failing and moving on. Then again sometimes you’ll dream big and get exactly what you want. So, these big dreams you’ve got? They’re worth pursuing. The wildest of dreams are worth pursuing. But take it from me - if your dream fails, it’s only because the one that’s meant to succeed is going to be that much better. So many amazing life changes have occurred because of me leaving the Race, my “dream.” I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without it. And I like that woman – failures and all.
I still believe I was meant to do the World Race, I was meant to get sick in South America, and I was meant to do all that just to return home again. I believe that God works all things for good, despite my bitterness and not understanding right now. I’m currently chasing my next dream, and it looks a lot different than backpacking the world. I went from the great outdoors to a classroom - I’ll be starting graduate school in a few weeks. I am chasing this dream with everything I have, and everything I learned from the loss of my last aspiration.
Hear me: it was still worth it. If I could go back knowing how it would end, I would still do it all over again. Failure is a small price to pay for the beauty you find in your brokenness. It’s in your failure that you truly begin to know yourself.
Let yourself dream. Let yourself dream beautiful, wild, dangerous dreams. Let yourself fail. Let yourself fail tragically, horribly and outrageously. You will only be stronger. You will only be wiser. You will define yourself more with each failure.
You will dream again.
I hope you never stop.
