How Did I Get Here? God's blessings on a boy.

Sitting at the office this morning I looked over to the corner of my desk to take a glance at the bifold picture frame sitting there. In it is one of my favorite photos from my wedding 2-1/2 years ago, and a recent photo of our almost eight-month-old son in his easter vest and tie outfit. I was captured by the question that came to mind - maybe because my wife and son are headed to Midland today and will be gone for two days; maybe because I'm a proud father and a smitten husband, "How did I get here?"

Do we sit back often enough simply to look back at where we have come from? Do you remember the child that you were? Do you remember the things you loved, the things you dreamed about - those things that were catalyzing in you which would become the aspirations of adolescence? Some people we call lucky because they are now living out the dreams that sprang forth in their youth. The rest of humanity, and often ourselves, we look upon with some pity because they are not living out those dreams, and we nostalgically spend evenings sharing with one another what we had hoped for and what might have been, ending the night with a long sigh of resignation, reluctantly turning back to consider the present and the future which, when compared to the dreams of the past, do not hold the same hope, same vitality, same excitement for us. I, we, you do not stop there, do we? What follows privately is the analyzation of what we could have done to make those dreams come true. Where were our mistakes? When did we compromise and let those things slip away from us? What can we do to get some measure of those dreams to be realized in the reality we find ourselves in? How might our future be endued with the dreams we once held?

Sound familiar? Be careful here! While some of us may be able to point out distinct decisions and mistakes made that have affected our life-paths, it is rarely so clear. We had certain hopes and dreams, and they looked great, beautiful and wonderful - because they were dreams! Hopes and dreams are not hopes and dreams unless they look great! There is nothing wrong with having hopes and dreams but there is a subtle issue underlying these nights of self-analysis and consternation, namely, were we in our youth pursuing the Lord, seeking from Him what our hopes and dreams ought to be? Somewhere between then and now we, as believers, learn to pursue God's dreams as our dreams, which correctly causes the dreams of our adolescence to be left behind, or modified/morphed to be those God desires for us.

Why do we invest so much importance and nostalgia into dreams that we our own and not the Father's? Why would we allow those things to cause angst, anxieties, frustrations, anger, and depression in our lives? Why hold on to things 'not of God' if we are now striving with all of ourselves to be both in word and deed, 'of God'? Shouldn't we more often look at photos of our life and be in awe of what God has done, be thankful for the blessings we have that have surpassed adolescent dreaming, be called to worship the One who has brought us through so much to where we are?

I did dream of a family, and I have the best. I have been blessed with a wife who loves me unconditionally, and a son that is already one of the coolest kids I know. I am sitting in the office of a church that has embraced my family as family, working on Sunday's sermon and dreaming about its future. What a place to be! - realizing that the dreams of youth have been surpassed by the Grace of God, and dreaming with a church in its adolescence the dreams of its youth. May the church come to a place years from now where it too is able to say that the Lord has blessed above and beyond all the dreams of youth.

"For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them." - Psalm 139:13, 15-16.