A dream is just a starting point....

"A dream is just a starting point for a  bigger goal." - Group 1 Crew (I Had a Dream)

I was bustin' a move on the treadmill this morning (don't start thinking I'm awesome workout girl, I'm not - I'm at pace for about 4x/month at the gym right now) and listening to some Group 1 Crew (a Christian hip hop band - no judging...). So the guy is singing about how he had a dream and a plan for his life and that the dream was just a starting point to a bigger plan that God had for him. All said in a way cool hip-hoppy way. It made me think about my life's 'dream'. When I was a freshman in college, I had no major and no idea what I wanted to do. I was assigned an advisor who I'm pretty sure still didn't know what he wanted to do with his life either, so he wasn't much help. He did ask me what I wanted to "be when I grow up" and I said I wanted to work at an orphanage. He told me to major in social work. The dumb thing is that I didn't go and sign up for that major at the time because I thought EVERYONE wanted to work in an orphanage. I thought it was some far-off thing that would never really happen because if everyone did exactly what they wanted to do in life, they'd end up caring for orphans. So I decided to try out the International Business program. Hahahahahaha. Ha. Literally went to one class, one day, and decided I hated business. By my sophomore year, I had chosen social work as my major, which was a LOT of work at my university, plus I had 3 jobs at the time. I was an RA, I was waitressing at Perkins, and I got up every morning at 4:45 to clean classrooms from 5:00 - 7:00 a.m. One night we had an RA meeting that started at 10pm. I was so tired, I remember everything moving slowly and kind of dreamlike. Afterward, I sat with 2 of my good friends, bawling about how I had too much going on. So quit stuff, they said. What? I can just quit stuff? This apparently was news to me. So I quit working at Perkins and dropped my social work major. I kept the morning job because, this is kinda embarrassing, but I loved it. I cleaned huge buildings by myself and I would sing at the top of my lungs every morning, for real, I did this. It made me a happy girl every morning, until my 8:00 class, where I inevitably fell asleep. I switched to studying sociology, which I LOVED. And I stopped thinking about my DREAM of working in an orphanage.

Fast forward to senior year. About a month before graduation and my plan was....nope, I had no plan. I was graduating with a sociology major, what can I do with that? Pretty much nothing. At our school, we had chapel every morning and one morning they spoke about a program they had where they sent alumni to teach English in Beijing, China. I recall barely blinking during the entire presentation. I knew 100% that this is what I was going to do. That was a Monday, I had an interview for the position that week, and by Friday, I was an official part of the team.

Let's see...long version would probably end up being a book, so let's condense this. Two years teaching English in China, 1 1/2 year break, and then....MY DREAM CAME TRUE. (Or so I thought.) I was headed to China to work at an orphanage!!!!!!!!!! I sold my car and everything else. Almost all of my possessions fit into 2 suitcases and I was off to China FOREVER. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand....7 months later I was home saying "What the heck? Why am I home? How did I fail at living out my only dream?" It was rough and I was embarrassed.

A DREAM IS JUST A STARTING POINT. Some other lyrics to the song, a little crazily applicable to my situation: "a little of my dream started dying, and how could this be, I thought that I was doing everything right, apparently he had much more for my life and that's when I fell asleep and had a new dream, saw things I've never seen, me adopted a baby girl and raise her as my little queen".
Yep, that's my new dream and it had to start somewhere. I'm thankful that God has been patient with me and has brought me through the confusion, feelings of failure, and setbacks. He and I have been on track all along, I just didn't realize it.

What's your dream? What was your starting point?