I spent the last few weeks helping someone build a website for a hunting lodge and wedding venue. Somewhere between conversations about seasons, wedding packages, logos, photographs, and all the details that come with turning an idea into something real, I found myself caught up in their excitement.
There is something wonderful about watching someone imagine what “could be.”
Maybe that’s why my coaching calendar is filled with dreamers. I seem drawn to people who have paid their dues, worked hard, and served well, often for years. They have raised their families, built careers, paid mortgages, cared for parents, volunteered at church, and done all the things that needed to be done. Somewhere along the way, many of them tucked away a dream while they cared for and provided for the people they loved.
Sometimes the dream had to wait because there were college bills to pay and groceries to buy. There were benefits that came with the job, and the security of knowing a consistent paycheck would arrive. There were children who needed attention, aging parents who needed care, and responsibilities that could not simply be set aside because something else sounded exciting.
Some of them dreamed of writing a book or starting a ministry. Others wanted to earn a master’s degree, attend seminary, open a wedding venue, or build a hunting lodge. Once upon a time, the dream was so clear they could almost see it, but life slowly filled the space around it until eventually they stopped thinking about it at all.
Then the second act arrives. The children grow up, retirement appears on the horizon, or finances become a little more secure. Time opens where there has never been margin before, and sometimes the dream is still there.
I have been thinking about that this morning, and I keep coming back to a familiar verse from Ecclesiastes: “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
I have always loved the promise of beauty in that verse, but today I am drawn to those last three words: in its time.
I wonder if we sometimes misunderstand the years between the dream and the opportunity to pursue it. We can look back and see all the reasons we had to wait, while God may have been using those same years to prepare us for something we could not yet see.
What if timing is part of the preparation?
A dream can be real when we are thirty and still require twenty more years of living before we are ready for it. The years spent raising a family teach us how to lead, listen, sacrifice, and love. The career we chose because we needed a consistent paycheck gives us skills and relationships we may eventually use in ways we could never have predicted. Caring for someone else develops patience and compassion, while disappointments teach us things about ourselves, other people, and God that we could never have learned when life was easy.
I wonder how many of the ordinary responsibilities that seemed to leave no room for the dream were actually preparing us to carry it.
My book, Reflections of Joy, could not have been written by thirty- or even forty-year-old me. I had surely lived enough life to write a book, but I didn’t yet have the perspective to write the book I eventually wrote.
I know other people writing books now about seasons they have overcome, stories they could never have told while they were still in the thick of them. I see women stepping into ministry with decades of life behind the words they share. I see people returning to school because they finally understand what they want to learn and why. Others are building businesses around interests and gifts that have been part of them for most of their lives.
Last weekend, I watched someone talk about a hunting lodge and wedding venue with the kind of excitement that makes possibility feel real, and it made me wonder how many dreams simply need time.
I think that might be part of what it means for something to become beautiful in its time. God sees the dream, the person who will carry it, the people it may eventually serve, and all the preparation required along the way.
When I look at it that way, the waiting years begin to look different. We were living, learning, growing, serving, loving, failing, trying again and again, and becoming. God was present in all of it, even when the dream seemed to have disappeared. An old dream can surprise us when it returns because we recognize the idea, but we are no longer the same person who first dreamed it.
I don’t believe every old dream needs to be fulfilled. Some belonged to another season, and some may have served their purpose simply by pointing us in a new direction. Still, I’m beginning to wonder if you’re like me and sometimes too quick to dismiss the dreams that return simply because so much time has passed.
What did you dream about before life became so full?
Is there something you once imagined doing that you haven’t allowed yourself to think about in years? Is there an idea that still makes you a little more animated when you talk about it, or a possibility that keeps finding its way back into your thoughts?
I wonder what would happen if we resisted the urge to immediately decide whether the dream is practical or possible and simply brought it back into our prayers. We could ask God why it has returned and become curious about what all those years have given us that we didn’t have the first time we dreamed it.
Maybe the invitation is simply to trust that the God who makes everything beautiful in its time knows something about timing that we don’t.
The dream may have been waiting for you to notice it again.
And I wonder if now is the time.
Be Happy 🧡