In the middle of December, my boys were begging to go camping. I was content to let them get their fake campfire and maybe a blanket fort. Prince Philip was not. When he arrived home and saw our pitiful little blanket fort, he immediately started to take it down. The boys were almost in tears until they saw it’s replacement. My sweet, indulgent Prince Philip set up our large family tent in our tiny living room, smushed up into the Christmas tree. We had to open the window of the tent in order to watch television through the bug screen. What a sight! My little knights were determined to sleep in it, even though I knew they would be crawling out, sleepy-eyed in the night, to look for a mommy snuggle. How often are we like my children when our own dreams and creations are crushed or dismantled?!

I had a bit of a tough time recently with longing to go back to my singing career and produce my music. Oooh. That’s a l lot of me’s and my’s. I’ve been called to a different life, one of service, His music, and His time. Especially when ministry is hard or when, as most churches now, there is some crossroads theologically or politically, I just longed for my old dream. Then God sent a huge confirmation that I was right where I needed to be.

Remembering The First Dream

As God would have it, a man came along in my life when I was singing and traveling , and about to hit radio play, to remind me of the dream God had given me for my life many years before. I had just spent hundreds of hours and many thousands of dollars producing my second album. Walking away seemed foolish. I still can’t believe I did it sometimes. But what most people did not see is that God had been working my dream over in my heart and mind. I was realizing that what I longed to do was not to just stand on a stage and sing or lead worship; I longed to do life with people, to love them at their lowest, like someone did for me. I began to desire to marry someone who already had children (I didn’t know you could be called to that ministry, but-here we are!). I began to long to marry a pastor.

Well all of that came wrapped up in my Prince Philip and it has been total joy being wife, pastor, and mom to three girls, then giving birth to two boys and ministering alongside my husband, singing, preaching, teaching-truly delightful most of the time.

Just like when Prince Philip dismantled the fort the little knights had worked so hard on, I mourned what might have been, my old dream. However, God had a dream for me that was far beyond what I could dare to dream of or imagine.

Friends, if God is calling you to a new dream, don’t cry too much when he knocks down your tent that you worked so hard on. If He is indeed calling you, His tent will be way better and maybe completely different.

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19