Last year while I was on sabbatical there was a deep question bouncing around my head and heart: “What are the dreams inside me?”

Out of that sacred space, I launched Tree by Water, a ministry to spiritually care for spiritual caregivers. 

But lately, answering and living out that dream hasn’t given me the fuel that it did a year ago.  I have found myself in the middle of February in Wisconsin with a healthy dose of malaise.

And not only was it the dead of winter, but I was stuck at home….  Ahem, I mean, I had the pleasure and honor to care for my daughter for a week and a half at home while she had a horrible case of mono. I had plenty of time to contemplate why I was tired. Duh, Laura. You have been cooped up in your house for a week and a half, really worried about your daughter, without adult interaction or very much sunlight. That’s a pretty normal reason to be tired.

So I started juicing vegetables and fruits hoping for some physical burst of vitamins and minerals and then I quickly moved on to the question, “How do I get my mojo back?”

Here is a truth: The fuel of the dream doesn’t last indefinitely.

There is a middle, ordinary space where we have the choice to continue on, to pause, or to turn around and go back.

And then, God gave me a question to answer. It’s a little wordy, so you may have to read it out loud. “What do you want to have done when you die?” Let me put it a couple ways. “What do you want to leave behind?” “What do you want to leave as a legacy?”

I heard an interview years ago of an author and he admitted that he didn’t enjoy writing.  This famous, gifted, and celebrated author didn’t like writing! He said to the interviewer, “But I love to have written.”

Oh, boy. There is a gigantic mega huge lesson there for us in that sentence. 

“But I love to have written.”

There are things for us to do on this earth, and we can spend our days birthing the dreams in our hearts as we live out our lives with purpose and service. Or we can squander them.

Our internal motivations, our habits, and how we daily live it out will determine to what extent we give the world what we have.

What do you want to have done when your days are done?

Spend a little time with yourself and God. Grab a journal and then go after it!

I would love to know what comes to mind.  You can post it in the comments. And I am going to share a few of my thoughts in the first comment below.

Love to you!

Laura