Thursday, June 16, 2016

KEEPING DREAMS ALIVE

My energetic, beautiful, grandmother, writer-friend Jennifer, age 71, wrote in her current newspaper column about fulfilling one of her sort-of-bucket-list dreams this week.

I quote from her column which she calls, TOP BLOND: LIVING ON THE RUN.

“How long should we keep a dream alive? One year? Five? Until it comes true? It depends, one might say, on how realistic or feasible it is. But, does that really matter? To some degree, it does. Perhaps it really boils down to importance. If our dream is truly significant to us, we will find a way to make it come true. 

"Now that my kidney transplant and open heart surgery are behind me, I feel a responsibility to embrace the second chances given me. One came from love (Dot, my kidney donor), and the other from the skill of a surgeon's hands. Both are miraculous blessings and have afforded me a new lease on life....“The day may yet come when my body, or mind, won't allow me to continue 'living on the run' [the title of her column]. Until that day, I'll be looking for ways to keep kicking up my heels!”

I wrote in her comment space, “I applaud you loudly! As a long-time lung cancer surgery survivor myself, I'm running beside you as we try to fulfill God's 'bucket list' of His individual life purposes for each of us.” I signed it “Your Birthday Buddy,” since we celebrate our birthdays on the same June 22nd date but I'm 20 calendar years in age ahead of her.

IN PURSUIT OF DREAMS
Leona Choy

I have some dreams, Lord
leftovers from early years
just hanging there in midair
whose strings I can't let go
some goals that I can't meet
some desires of my heart of hearts
plans I can't complete.
I wonder now—
were they even meant
for fulfillment?

Perhaps some are my own
foolish fantasies
hot air balloons of self
launched from the platform
of my puny pride.
Is my chief distress
that they'll come hissing down
to my embarrassment
without accomplishment?

Then teach me relinquishment
to cut the strings
of those inappropriate dreams
and self-ambitious things
to let them go
and not despair
to surrender them
to Your sovereign care
and be content
to leave them there.

Yet—if perchance the dreams are meant
by Your Divine intent
to come to reality
for Your glory and not mine
inspire me, enable me, my Lord
to pursue them relentlessly
if need be
all the way from here to Eternity!

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