The angel answered…“Nothing, you see, is impossible with God.”
And Mary said,
“Yes, I see it all now:
I’m the Lord’s maid, ready to serve.
Let it be with me
just as you say.”
~ Luke 1:36-38
She leans across the table and levels her question, phrased in a way that seems to hit out of blue.
“No,” I answer, hoping it ends there. But…nope… she goes on.
“So…not now…or not ever?” the stranger continues, unspoken query in tone that makes me wonder what is hidden there.
Suddenly, I feel like a bug under glass. A less than normal bug.
Because she’s hitting at a lifelong dream I’ve had to give up. One I try not to think about much, and mostly, truly, succeed in not dwelling on these days. But just this weekend… with one thing or another… it’s been in my “I just wish I understood why not” conversations with Him. I thought I was pretty much…letting it go. But once again…fighting the lie of missing the real in life. How some things are just too late. And purposing… not to let it get me down. So that these questions, in this moment, strike raw. I recognize the holder of the arrows – and it is not this basically friendly woman.
Don’t go there, I tell myself. Biting my lip.
Because, there are dreams that we just have to surrender. Dreams that seem God-sized for others…maybe for most others… but I guess, this one, not for me.
I think I hear similar echoes of your own self-doubts in comments here lately.
- “ME? A God-sized dream? For you, maybe. But not for me. My life’s too ordinary. I’m just not important or clever or [fill in]… ENOUGH.”
- “God-sized. Hmmm. Sounds overwhelming. Something for someone with more time…or know how… than I have.”
- “God knows… I’m too humble… What does that mean, God-sized, anyway?”
One thing I think it does not mean is… just for writers, or artists, or musicians.
Or… just for those who don’t stutter… or those who are young… or those who have platform.
Or…just for those who have it all together. (Does anyone?)
I remember how I once wrote to bolster someone, encouraging him to know and believe…he was a dream of God.
You are my God-sized dream too, He whispers again and again. And you…and you…
And like the angel bearing His favor and grace to Mary, He is calling, anointing us each to walk with Him in that dream…to hold and carry Him within…to listen for and follow specific dreams He plants inside our hearts and thoughts and fingers and voices. For they all lead back to His grand dream…to reveal His heart through us…and bring His children home.
His dream is grand. God-sized, for we certainly could not have thought it up.
But like raindrops held in suspension on a branch, the dreams He puts in you and me are just one at a time jewels meant to glisten and glimmer and turn the resulting pool into His Anne Shirley lake of shining waters over the world.
Certainly, for some of us, they may partly be things like writing a book, or a published story. Succeeding in a career direction… or finding doors of necessary provision.
But really it’s so far beyond that. A gift so much less intimidating than we think. Because, it isn’t up to us to achieve at all.
I had a dream that began when I was just a little girl. It was a prayer…for someone I didn’t really know. Couldn’t know. A prayer that grew and grew beyond myself…carried into my adulthood…ebbed and flowed in ways I could not have thought of by myself….and even led to a small world connection I never imagined. I didn’t understand that until many, many years had passed: That this was not my own dream.
So simple in the individual everyday moments, but I see now…over a lifetime…it came from a dream in His heart. A God-sized dream. If I had known in the beginning – I know I would have been daunted. I am just a child, Lord, I would have said.
Maybe you are saying that right now.
I am just a child, Father. What can I do?
I encourage you… listen to His whisper in your heart. Don’t be put off by the term, God-sized. Think raindrops.
So often, in your uplifting comments here, you leave me pearls stringed with hope. Encouraging me to believe I will write a book, or doors will open. I don’t really think in terms of books and things right now, though I do have dreams that God will take my words and art, make way for gifts He’s given to provide for me financially, set me free to bless others through them and…most of all…reflect the Father’s heart to those who are longing to know it…those He is wooing to know it…
I appreciate your words, most of all your prayers, in those directions. Most of all I long for those that are like that prayer dream… Ways He takes our hands and uses us to reveal a touch of His majesty on the world. It isn’t meant to be just about me, that I’m writing in blogging these God-sized dreams…
I want to encourage you to know He’s put God-sized dreams in you. So He can make you a hope-bearer.
God-sized. For most of us, that doesn’t mean inter-galactic.
It probably doesn’t mean going to missions around the world…though it might.
It may be as simple as a smile to a lonely stranger. A cookie on a plate. Or as wondrous as motherhood.
But I’m betting there is a gift in your hands, in your words, in your heart that He wants to set soaring.
And even as the angel sang to Mary… He is singing over you and over me…
“Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you…
…You have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you…” ~ Luke 1: 28 -33 (The Message)
Like Mary, we may be “thoroughly shaken, wondering what’s behind a greeting like that…”
I wonder now… could Mary have had a precipitous thought here and there as she was growing up that one day she would carry God’s son? Did she “see it all now” because God had already been preparing her heart for the news? You know, those amazing what ifs that pop into our minds and we shrug them off as crazy daydreams?
Have we?
What if she had said no… impossible… not me?
Sometimes…out of the dreams that must be surrendered… still others, not fully imagined, are born…
Let not your heart give up. He is opening up the skies and watering your dreams right now…
.
© Pam Depoyan
What crazy impossible thoughts have you been “daydreaming” that might just be whispers of your God-sized dream? 
.
Linking with Holley today at 
in writing “A Letter to the God-sized Dreamers – why those dreams are worth it, even on the hard days….” She says it so beautifully today and I encourage you to click the button with the key to read her words…
Also sharing with:
. Soli Deo Gloria 
A Holy Experience 
photos: http://www.fotosearch.com
Pam- Thank you for writing and posting this today! I have been struggling with all the hubbub about God-sized dreams…your words helped me to see this call in a different light…I love the raindrop anaology and the comparison to Mary embracing God’s invitation to her…my dream is just to keep putting one foot in front of the other…to follow one step at a time…leaning and trusting…be willing to be surprised! I love your heartfelt musings that lead to deeper understanding of God’s grace and love and dreams for each one of us…I want to be a hope-bearer like you!
Kel, you make me teary. I didn’t know if I should take time to write this today because I really need to be doing some other things too. And here half the day is already gone. I just asked Him… was this what I was supposed to be doing today?
So, thank you for commenting that too…
I have been sensing that you are not alone in the way you have been feeling about it sounding too much hubbub. I just went over to read at Holley’s and she is saying exactly what you just said about keeping one foot in front of the other. That it is more about Jesus and taking His hand more and more than anything else. Thank you for saying I’m a hope bearer!
You are one too…
Pam, as your posts always are, this is beautiful, poetic, insightful, and encouraging. I just read what my friend Kel wrote above, and I’m glad that you are blessing us both. I think perhaps the term God-sized dream can give the wrong connotation. Please do understand. I am not knocking that for a second! I think I understand it in the context that it is meant—that if there is a dream so big that we know we could never accomplisih it on our own, it could well be from God, because then we will relinquish pride and lean on Him every step of the way. And when it is accomplished, we will know undoubtedlyrealize that we did NOT do it alone, but it was only done by Him through us. So we give Him the glory!!! He gets the praise! I think this is the meaning. Perhaps the flipside is that one can think if a dream is God-sized, then it is larger and more important than life, and if we never accomplish a dream as big as God, then we have failed or we have not allowed Him to work through us. There are quiet dreams which can be just as God-directed as the larger ones, and if we think our dream is not God-sized, we might think we are wrong in what we heard God telling us to do. And dreaming smaller dreams is a humbling process. Also, sometimes smaller, humbler dreams are more difficult to accomplish, because we really have to die to our desires and simply do His bidding in less conspicuous ways. Not sure I am saying this very well, and I don’t have time to proof. Perhaps I might say, “Is my dream God-directed, be it large or small? Am I willing to obey what He tells me to do to bring it to fruition? Is this dream about bringing glory to Him or to me? Will it bless others? Will I lean on Him to accomplish the dream through me, or try to do it all on my own steam? Am I willing to let this dream die, even though I long to see it materialize, and even though I thnk that it is God who planted this dream in my heart? What will I do if He asks me to relinquish the dream that I know He gave me in the first place, even when it makes no earthly sense? Do I love the dream more than the Dream-Giver?” You are a brave lady for saying this: “Because, there are dreams that we just have to surrender. Dreams that seem God-sized for others…maybe for most others… but I guess, this one, not for me.” That is the raw, unvarnished truth. Sometimes God gives us dreams and then He asks us to relinquish them. Sometimes He gives them back again later, sometimes He replaces them with something better, and sometimes He just says “let this go,” and never says another thing and the dream will never materialize in our lifetime……..but I think He is also saying, “Will you trust me?” And that is when we realize that dreams have this illusive, ethereal quality to them, and sometimes they are never realized. But even in the letting go, and in enduring the pain of that (and I have had to let go some precious dreams, and I bled), there is an excrutiating joy in knowing that even in this, we obey, and God blesses us, and draws us to Himself in the passionate embrace of comfort and love. And as we rest in His embrace, we enjoy the dream of intimacy with Him, the ultimate dream which can elude many. And there is not a greater dream fulfilled than that. God bless you for a thought-provoking, rich, and encouraging post, Pam! I always learn and benefit here!
Love
Lynni
Thank you, Lynn. And you wonder if you would have “enough” to say if you blogged! You hit a lot of truths. I did not come up with the term “God-sized” (that is from Holley) but I was already thinking along those lines when she began blogging it. To me, I think of it more as “a dream sized by God.” I think others may see those words and be thinking in terms of what our world would think – because even though we aren’t of this world, we are influenced by what we hear around us. And to the world “God-sized” might ONLY mean huge celebrity of one kind or another. God certainly does use celebrity, but I don’t think that is the definition – but more what is a dream God has given us that is part of His bigger dream, one that He put in us because He wants to make us His partners in His grand one. And like you said, it can be quiet, or “small” in our eyes…but in God’s eyes, He has “sized” it just for us. And maybe in some cases, to stretch us or amaze us at what He is doing in and through us… It is humbling to know how He wants to!
I’m so glad you are encouraged and that you feel benefit in what I post. I sometimes wonder if anyone is much blessed…but then again, this whole blogging thing seems to be an avenue God is using “behind the scenes” more than we know. I appreciate your heart!
.
Thank you Pam. I thnk you heard my heart. I am not knocking the term God-sized or trying to split hairs, but until I read your post, I didn’t realize that there could be another connotation. that’s all. But what I love is that bloggers like you, like Holley, like Kel, like Shelly, like Jennifer–all those I love–are getting out there in the trenches and writing your hearts out. Likely, this is one of your dreams. And you are all doing exceptionally well. And if just one person reads it and is blessed, then you are fulfilling your God-size,d, God-ordained dream. Press on! You’re a good, wise, and faithful servant!
Love
Lynni
Thank you, Lynn. I just had that feeling from comments here that some may have been feeling “less than” in this topic, not understanding or thinking they didn’t “measure up.” I think Holley has beautifully expressed her definition but it can become muddled with other voices, I guess… Mary was called to physically carry Him, but we are all to carry Him spiritually… and that is what blesses me.
Pam~~WOW… God wanted you at the computer keys as HE poured the words into your heart and out they came! All of us have dreams–some are big and no matter how much we want it, for HIS reasons only, things do not work as we had wished. I wanted to be a Nurse from the time of being a little girl, read “Florence Nightingale” at least ten times (a sweet memory as I recall seeing my name on the checkout card for Library records-and did the same with “Clara Barton” as they became my Nursing Heros. Colllege was not possible for my parents to handle-so life went on. God did answer my dream~~as our son “gift from God” had numerous health problems and let me say, I got to be a Nurse!!
Now I hear another desire pulling at me~~~”a gentle whisper” that I believe to be impossible.
Yet with God–I know nothing is impossible–my dream is to go to a hospital where our young
veterans are recovering from devastating wounds–arms & legs missing, severe brain injuries-
My wish is to visit them and just LISTEN. When a arm or leg is gone, the amazing body formed
by God keeps sending a message by something called Phantom Nerve Pain. Its misery-and now
young soldiers must begin the journey of dealing with Chronic Pain. I want to help–its that simple.
You see-I did not step up and volunteer to serve my Country-then being wounded while in the line of battle~~~my injuries came because I climbed up a tree–and fell to the ground. But I am still here~~~and I finally learned this when I started blogging, sharing my story, hearing from others who suffer far worse than I do. So I wonder~~ “Could this dream be possible?”
Thank you for allowing me this lengthy post Pam. Your words moved me!! I work hard at trying to
“Keep my feet on HIS Path.” God bless you, Martha
I think that definitely sounds like His dream whispered into you, Martha! Maybe there is a way you can do that in baby steps, since I know you don’t always have energy. Maybe contact a doctor at one of those hospitals and ask about possibilities. I understand what you mean about trying hard…but sometimes it is in just resting in Him. I never could learn to swim, but one thing I remember them telling me was to relax and let the water take me, just lean back and trust to float… I think that is how God wants us to be in Him. Not always easy, but so blessed when we do. I’m so glad this spoke to your heart, Martha. You are right… as long as we are here, there is a dream in us for Him to use. I encourage you in yours!! (And what you said about being a nurse as a mom is so true too… also a teacher, a counselor etc etc
)
I love what you said about the books you read and your memories of your name on the card… I was just thinking how they don’t have those anymore and you can’t tell if others have read the book etc. I used to love two fiction series about a nurse when I was small… Sue Barton and Cherry Ames…
Pam-
ah bless you for the encouragement–and the reminder of my endurance… A lesson I must force myself to keep learning. But I can still put one Foot in front of the other, and then Reach for HIS hand!! We shall see.
Please if you don’t mind–I tried to send you an email tonight re:house and it came back.
thank you Pam.. what a blessing you are to so many. martha
Martha, I love your idea about volunteering in a hospital. You dn’t have to be a nurse to serve. Vounteers are so desperately needed. Another thing you could do to serve our military is to work at a USO. I am the former executive director of the world’s largest USO in St. Louis, and I can’t begin to tell you how much our volunteers ministered to the men, women, and their families in America’s military as we sought to be a home away from home to those who serve our country. Many of these young men and women had never been away from home before, and some were headed for war. They were scared, and they needed a compassionate, listening ear. Just another thought to pray over.
Lynn
Lynn-
Hello!! Thank you so much for these words and explaining from your heart how much our young military men and women are in need of love and comfort. I will pray about it and see what I can discover. This is the first time I have allowed the words to surface of this desire to help. God bless.Martha
Oh Martha, I’m excited for you. It seems if God is laying this dream on your heart. Many USOs are at airports, and some in town. I’d go to their HQ website and see if there is one near you. You’d be such a blessing. I think I left my heart at USO. =]
Blessings and godspeed as you to seek to follow Him in ministry.
Lynn
Hi Pam,
“hope-bearers”…and today, I was asking God if I really believed that He could do the impossible like what He told Mary…this process is still one of learning to trust Him for me…funny, but I mentioned Mary in my post today…Thanks for sharing your heart
I just clicked your name to read your beautiful post, Dolly, and I hear Him echoing all over the place!
I love what you said about asking Him for an Elizabeth (like He gave to Mary). I love that He used my thoughts as a part of an answer to your question today too! Thanks for sharing yours too… Trust IS an ongoing process 
I like so much to be a “hope-bearer”. Perhaps people do think in material-size, but God thinks in spritual-size. And that is beyond comprehension. So when a dream or idea is born, which to us is impossible, like Lynni said…. it must be of God. What one can do then, when that vision is actually grasped, is to hitch it to the one Who dreamed it first…. HIM!
Ahh, Pam. As always, you stir me so. I do think of myself as ordinary. But those He used in the Bible are ordinary, unsuspecting people….. and some are hesitant like Moses. But he eventually led the Israelites to walk down the parted sea to the promised land nor did Joseph knew that He will end up Pharoah’s assistant in Egypt-via slavery.
Thank you, Pam. And when I wish something for people, by heart, I want to point it as His too.
Love this post so much.
I love that, Lo—–hitch to the one Who dreamed it first! Amen, sister!
Yes, Lynni…. we need His empowerment, if we have to achieve it. The words are ABIDE and CLEAVE!
And the picture of Angel’s wings is so apt. I need to wear a pair of those to launch my dreams.
Lolita-
I believe your”wings” have been there since the day HE brought you into this world. Remember–one foot in front of the other.
Pam–I don’t know if you thought this particular post would have us “chatting” back and forth-hearts opening up and sharing!! An extra special blessing for all.
martha
Yes, we may feel “ordinary,” but no one is ordinary who holds the Lord in his/her heart, for He is Lord of the extraordinary. I love your references to all the ordinary of the word used and blessed of the Lord… Thank you for all your words here that always ring with hope.
Oh, Martha. It is good that you keep following Pam. I can check on you here even if I have slow time going on blogs. Thanks for the encouragement and your prayers.
Keep those fingers on keys so that we can update each other.
I want to fire your dreams too, Martha. If God keeps us here, we have to dream still, despite some unfavorable circumstances. We have diffirent ones, yet we have one altar to lay them on. Upon the Rock of all ages.
Bless you today, dear, and I pray for those God-moments, God-joy over pain!
I was looking for encouragement in the blog posts linked to Holley for letters to our God-sized dreamer sisters — I found it in your blog. Thank you.
Oh, thank you for letting me know that, Janet. I hoped this would encourage!!
Yes! Oh, yes! So much truth and encouragement here – that it’s not necessarily the big, but the little, and that He is working in all of it. Thank you for sharing this, Pam!
Thanks, Mary! It is so true, isn’t it?