A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog called Getting Started, and I ended it by asking if I was the only person that seems to have desires and dreams that came out of nowhere. Well, yesterday I took some time to sit and have a good talk with Jesus in my journal about some of those things.

I began to write about a few things I find myself interested in or curious about. Some things made sense and some seemed to come out of left field. So, as I wrote I also asked Jesus where all of this stuff was coming from. I mean, I’m 34 years old and the only thing I wanted to do growing up was play softball and hang out with friends.

That’s when Jesus reminded me of a couple of things about my childhood. There were two things I remember clearly wanting to do, but was always shut down for a few different reasons. And as I began to process that, I felt like Jesus was very gently telling me that my childhood environment was not conducive to the cultivation of certain skills, gifts, or dreams.

I’m going to side step that story for a minute and ask a question. Are you able to look back on your life and see moments in time where God protected you? Well, I can… A lot.

I have looked back on my life several times and I’m always the most grateful for all of the times God very clearly protected me. Not so much from my early childhood, but definitely from my teenage years and beyond. I did a lot of really stupid stuff. And I mean really stupid.

I put myself in so many compromising situations that I’m surprised I don’t have some more serious wounds or consequences to work through. Now, obviously there have been wounds and consequences, but things could have been SO MUCH WORSE.

But that’s a different story, the point of me mentioning that is to point out how much God protects us, even in the moments when we feel the least protected. And while I was talking to Him about these dreams in my journal, I got the feeling that He was letting me know that all of these passions and dreams and desires have always been in my heart. But out of protection, they’ve been buried deep, deep in my heart. They were so deep in fact that I didn’t know they existed for 30ish years. How crazy is that?

Now I don’t know if I subconsciously buried them out of some kind of self-preservation or if God buried them to protect me, or simply because it wasn’t time for them to be revealed. I say to protect me, because I know how fragile my heart was growing up. I know how hard it would have been to try and go after some of these dreams as a kid only to be knocked down over and over and over again. I probably would have given up on those things and never revisited them, because once I’ve tried something and it didn’t work, it’s very unlikely I’ll try it again. Especially if I gave it everything I had the first go round.

So now… here I am… 34 years old and learning so much about myself with each passing day. It’s almost like the more I allow myself to dream, the more I surprise myself with the things that pop out of my heart and into my mind. Honestly, it’s a bit exciting. Because I have no idea what direction God is going to take me in, but I do know that I’m more than willing to go along for the ride.