Blue Pinstripes, Courage, & Disappointment.

My journey into my adulthood dreams began with the unleashing of the child within me. I bought a bike and rode it by the sea to feel the wind in my hair and the smile on my face.

Little by little, this confidence crept in, and the process became like nesting.

I recycled any clothing that made me uncomfortable, restricted, or even felt defining in the wrong sense, as though my clothes would open up a new space to dream.

Soon after, I fell in love with blue pinstripes. I bought a set of shelf organizers for a white cubby (I could picture but didn't yet own) simply because I liked them. Two years prior, I had read a book for creatives about investing in my creative space because that would open up new energy to work in by valuing my craft. These organizers DID open up space because they didn't go with any of my room's color schemes. LOL. Yet, they were a small practical investment for sorting and stashing my art supplies, and I loved looking at them! The created order helped me immensely, and it did open up new work.

A year after their purchase, one Saturday morning, I headed out to my car and found the very shelf I pictured the year before in the free stash of my building. I grabbed it without hesitation and brought it to the initially envisioned space inside my room. That shelf meant I could also buy more books, the keepers of the little clues that help me dream. Something inside of me awakened a little more.

I have gravitated toward meaning within my art and within what I hang on my walls. In adulting, I have learned crowning a work in a frame and putting it on a wall is a season marker for me. For example, when I was visiting my family in my birth state last summer, I was in a season of gathering joy. My dream was to pick wild berries in the hills and make homemade chia jam. It was very modern Laura Ingles Wilder, and unfortunately, it was out of season. I did, however, pick wildflowers, and I dried them. It was a season of favor for this because every type of flower imaginable bloomed that year (which can be a bit hit or miss regularly). These dried beauties are now suspended on my wall, in my creative space, in frames. They represent profound meaning to me.

Nesting and investments like these little impulses have formed a space to call home, which also synchronously caused me to drop down some deep roots into who I am. I'm growing; I'm making space, and I am presently walking at a slower pace toward progress in the process. As a result, I am less worried about dreams passing me by and more captivated by the lessons along the way.

I dropped a lot of fear and striving, which has built courage in my brain to explore a little.

Yet, disappointment can have some harsh edges. It can cut and drain the flow of life from a dream.

At the edge of a disappointment presently, I surprised myself, finding the thread of a conversation with God much easier to turn and find than it has been in the past. I think it is because I have filled my bank of trust with Him by following these little investments and watching them create the life I want. This natural trust allowed me to leave Him with the choice to resurrect my dream and its process or not.

Maybe He wanted me to try those steps from the start so that I could see my shortcomings. For example, learning new methods of doing, asking for help, and building might need different tools and tactics from now on.

Is He cruel to allow the walk without the guarantee?

I do not think so.

Because the help He promised to give me was to be with me. The promise given wasn't to make me a success by helping me always see the potholes of life and never get bumped. So this has been a year of learning to value His Presence and connection more than what He can do for me. It has changed our relationship immensely.

In the moment of disappointment, with doubt and grief, I faced what looked like a loss of momentum toward a dream because of the trust I had built, and I didn't whither. Instead, I chose not to gather and dwell in negative thoughts about the quality of my work/advertising ability.

Doubt dictated questions like: Is it true that what is built in my own strength must be sustained by it? Then how many dreamers get miracles? And how many sit on top of mountains meditating, waiting, life passing them by? What if I make something and see that God won't fill what I start?

When I hear those thoughts, a little buzzer goes off in my head. I remember, with curiosity, that I have permission to take a pass on self-judgment and that God is much kinder than I think. What is the look on His face? I know He is smiling.

What if what I built needed to fail, to shatter? When it did, I could see all the little pieces and, from there, the gift of a possibility.

I may yet see what He does with the pieces.

I always tell creatives when they begin with an idea to be gentle with themselves at the end. It usually will turn out differently than it looked in your head. The difference doesn't make you bad at your craft: process changes outcomes. Take this phrase as another life lesson to hold lightly.

Maybe those little shattered dream shards will individually have more strength to influence than the original whole. The process may allow me to see a different kind of grace.

Maybe the God I pictured in a disappointment was the key to overthrowing sorrow and staying curious. The soccer dad with the #1 fan teacher and foam finger out flipping homemade, glittered-up signs for me, his child, who is trying to grow a little skill.

I have changed somewhere along the line of buying a bike and landing in an unexpected broken dream. I DO love process. I do hear God through a different tone. I am more confidently creative in all my endeavors. These changes have made me realize what held me back from starting the process of becoming the woman I want to be in my 40s was thinking I had to know how to do each of those dreams. Now I realize what will make my 40s lovely is enjoying the steps through what I create. I bet these moments become the source of the white-haired wisdom those further along in the journey offer.