We Woke Up

Below is an analysis of the current stage of my life as I experience it. It's not a perfect metaphor, but I couldn't get it out of my head, so I decided to write about it. Here goes nothing:

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Breaking up is like waking up when all I want to do is go back to sleep.

Not just regular waking up, but it’s the kind of waking up that happens when you just had a dream where you are 100% sure you are awake and are actively getting ready for your day.

Ever had one of those dreams? 

You know, you see and feel yourself getting out of bed in a great mood, and in fact, you woke up super early for once and feel so well rested! You get dressed and you make yourself breakfast and then hear an obnoxious noise – your alarm goes off in the real world and you realize that none of those things actually happened.

Reality check:

You woke up late, your boss is calling you because you missed your morning meeting, and it’s laundry day so you have to choose between wearing your high school PE clothes or the pair of pants that is tight in all the wrong places. At this point, you're so late that you contemplate just calling in sick or claiming you had some kind of accident just so you can just stay in bed and wallow in the shadow of your mediocrity, wishing you could somehow stay in the dream world from which you were rudely displaced. 

Welcome back to the real world.

You're awake now and you have choices to make. 

You can do what I did today and let the rude awakening get the best of you, wondering when you'll get to go back to sleep and pretend like this whole day never happened. You can walk around angry at the world for not being as "I-woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed" as you are. You can decide that you'll never leave the house again because waking up and walking around is just too hard so you'd rather stay home and sleep, hoping that somehow the dream will stick this time. You can check out and sleepwalk throughout life, wishing that your dreamworld was a reality. 

OR.. 

You can realize this is a new day.

It's a miracle that you woke up at all. 

There is breath in your lungs and life in your eyes, no matter how dead your heart my feel.

You already did the hardest thing: you let go of the dream you were dreaming, and now you get to decide if you're going to step into reality. Now you get to decide if you'll give yourself a chance to live again, to dream again. 

What does that look like?

It looks like putting one foot in front of the other. It looks like you pulling yourself out of bed and recognizing that you were born for something more than blissful sleep, you were born to move mountains, you were born to do great things. And it was never meant to stay a wishful dream, your life is meant to be a miraculous reality, a sign and a wonder for all those who surround you.

Remember? 

Remember the moment when you first discovered depression and anger weren't the foundation of your personhood?

Remember when your eyes were opened to the truth about who you are?

When you finally stopped looking at others to give you love and approval and realized that there was One who infused meaning, significance, and love into your very being?

Remember when you first got a hint that life was more than what you saw in front of you?

When you finally beheld eternity and understood the liberating reality that you are neither the center of the universe nor responsible for running it? 

Or maybe you're just starting to realize that now.

Whatever the case, there is more to life than the dream you were torn from. There is more to life than the season you're mourning over, because guess what? Waking up brings with it the wonderful possibility that you, visionary, miracle walker, beloved son and daughter, you get to dream again. And the beauty of the Dream Giver is that He always dreams a better dream, and we are often shocked by the very goodness of His work. We couldn't even imagine the kinds of things He's dreamed for us, we wouldn't even dare to ask for what He wants to give, but that's the catch: He so wants to give it!

He so wants to include and love and partner with us because it is so who He is! So He will use our moments of awakening to bring us to a better dream, the moment of our valley of the shadow of death to come and lay us by green pastures. He uses the moment of our desperation to show us how to move mountains, because all of this is actually HIS dream! His heart is that we would dream it with him. The more we wake up, the more we are positioned to finally align our hearts to His and rest in His hands. So when we walk around we are no longer longing for a dreamworld, but we are living the dream as daughters and sons of the best dreamer that could ever exist, the only dreamer that can actually make dreams a reality. 

So I hope to encourage you with these thoughts as they have encouraged me. Whatever season you're leaving, as hard as it may be, a new one is coming and I'm excited to see what it'll be. 

I leave you with a song that inspired some of these words: Lauren Alexandria's "Victorious in Love." Get inspired, because you were born to conquer mountains.