By Heather Michelle Williams
August 8, 2023
Warning: The following may contain a level of inspiration that you or the company you carry may or may not be ready for. Please be advised as to who you let in on your dreams.
I hope my type of humor comes across okay. Either way, I want to thank all of my readers for letting me practice on you. Did you know you were being practiced on? I am practicing my writing skills, and I am practicing materializing all of these perceptions of mine into relatable material for others. How is that?
We have made memories with our summer days this year. I was thrilled to take the kids out of town this past weekend for my twin boys’ birthday. As I drove, I was so inspired for myself and for others to BEGIN LIVING! Are you living yet??
I’m a very spontaneous person—and enjoy to be that way! In actuality, I struggle with organizing and planning. I LOVE to be organized and to have things planned out. It makes me feel WONDERFUL. But many times, it’s such an overwhelming undertaking. So, take note that it was a good feeling driving away for a few days with everything in place!
I feel that so many of my past plans were indeed intentionally sabotaged, that I began to feel utterly incapable of planning. Looking back, I really wasn’t bad at planning. I have done some good things, including setting forth and accomplishing a plan that made us debt-free. That took setting goals and making choices that didn’t make much room for the impulsive. It happened, though! Even our student loans were paid off. I just didn’t have a unified partner. Rather, I had someone who instilled self-doubt, which would make that person comfier in his position of authority. At one point, I gave up planning anything for the next two birthdays coming up for our children. If I knew it would be ruined anyway, then why try? I felt helpless. However, that wasn’t the end of the story, now, was it? One day I will elaborate on an idea that I am calling “untangling oneself from the narcissist.” For now, I will leap over that hurdle of explanation and go on with my point.
I think about all of the ventures that seemingly turned out to be nothing in my life. Maybe you call these things “failures” in your own life. If you will allow it, I would like to take you on a different trail of perception and show you what I see.
I picture it as like a bee going from one flower to the next. The bee doesn’t look around to see if there is applause or even approval! He just goes about getting a little from here, a little from there. In the end, it all mixes together to make something delicious to share with others! Honey! There are no failures. You get something from everywhere you’ve been!
I know I have some Amway ladies to thank for teaching me how to be a lady and that it’s okay to dream. Back in my just-became-an-adult days, I “sold” Amway. I sure didn’t do much selling because I was so shy and not much of a sales person. It’s more like I was in the club. But at those conferences, I saw ladies who didn’t know it, but they were teaching me how to fit into my own skin, how to not be afraid, how to use my words to build others up. I saw shining examples of ladies who did not have hunky-dory journeys but who overcame. I was such a child then. I did not even know how to do my make up when I first joined (not that I’m great at it now). I did not know how to carry on a conversation. I did not know how to be bold enough to even compliment someone OUT LOUD. I saw that it was okay to be a real human being. There is no cookie-cutter of what version of person we should be!
I did not become a millionaire from this venture. But I learned things. There are even recent ventures that I think about. I don’t see failure. I see a journey. I learned. And I am not done learning! Everything I have learned along the way, I am using or will use! And it will be for the betterment of myself and/or others!
When you allow yourself to dream, you may have questions that turn into walls that feel like dead-ends. Here’s a big one:
How do your inspirations and passions fit into your responsibilities? Well, if I can do it, you can do it! These days, I work hard, play hard, sleep hard. And guess what? I am loving to live my dreams! It just so happens that I get paid to live my dreams. How did that happen? Only God. That’s my only explanation—really!
Don’t forget about those things that God put deep down in your heart. It was Him who put them there, so it is Him who can make it happen. Don’t give up. There is room in your life! And the world needs those things to be in operation! You need them. One year, after hope came back to life in one particular category of dreams, I decreed to my own life to MAKE ROOM—there is more coming!
God is faithful to provide the baby steps to the unfathomable destination he allows you to have glimpses of in your heart’s dreams. Here is the kicker. The destination is the journey. The journey is the destination. That’s the “living” part of living your dreams. That’s what you will look back on. Believe me, or don’t believe me. The living journey part is supposed to be the fun part! If you are in a place of “this isn’t good enough—I need more,” then when you reach your imagined destination, it will still not feel good enough.
This is the land of opportunity, here in America. I realize I have some readers outside of the States. No, the opportunity is not the same for every person. But you can start somewhere! If your dream is to get rich and famous, I don’t know what to tell you because that is a goal based on the reaction of others. But if you have a passion to paint, write, mother, sing… any passion to DO something… then what’s stopping you? You CAN start somewhere. You can use those passions for whoever will listen or look or just for you, yourself, and God. If you are not a mother yet, start mothering yourself. Motherhood is a lot of taking compassion, giving instruction, leading young ones somewhere. There is no end to places that need this particular set of passions! Start—with yourself even.
When there was no evidence of those things in me of which I dreamt, it was inspiring people who brought something to flame. That is my hope in writing this. I have a flame. I want to share it. What are you made of? What makes you tick?
I will never forget how God PIERCED my heart one time in the middle of an X-Men movie! I don’t know much about the history of the characters. But the mind-reader, maybe even a time traveler? He speaks to the one in pain and says, “We need you to hope again.” It spoke to me in my pain and disappointment. It was a year or two later, I saw that movie again and decided to make a clip of just that conversation. I put it on my YouTube five years ago. I will include the link here.
That is what I want to tell any of you who read this. “We need you to hope again.” I know you have scrapes and bruises from life, probably worse—maybe some real brokenness. But humanity is counting on what is in you. Tell it to come to life again! And enjoy the journey! Do not look down on yourself! There is hidden treasure in you!
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