dream

Accountability is a beast, isn’t it? I once trained for a 10K, but I didn’t tell anyone except my husband. The morning of, I thought, “No one knows I signed up. If I don’t go (and my body was telling me that was a good idea) no one would know.”

But I went. And I ran a pretty good time.

When you speak your dreams and goals out loud, then it all matters, doesn’t it? And that’s exactly why we should do it.

When I Learned to Speak My Dream

For the last six years, a dream stirred in me. I wanted to write a book. The first couple of years, I wrote by myself in Panera and the public library and Starbucks. Once, a stranger asked me what I was doing. I told him, “I’m a writer.” He was incredibly impressed, and I felt like a complete fraud.

I don’t remember when I first told someone, “I’m writing a book.” I do remember that as the years passed, and the book still wasn’t finished, and then it wasn’t published, I grew sheepish. Ashamed that I had told anyone I was attempting this. Because accountability.

I should have kept my mouth shut, right? But no. I’m glad I didn’t. Because when we put our dreams out there, they become a little more real. And others rally around us. Or not. But that’s irrelevant. Because we are meant to speak our dreams out loud.

Why We Should Speak

Because this is what I know: when something good stirs in us, it’s from God. It’s not just a pipe dream-it’s the whisper of a calling. It might be more than just an idea; it might be the very thing you’re called to do.

And when we say it out loud, we honor what He puts in us. It makes us a little braver, or at the very least, slightly less willing to set it aside. And maybe that in itself is bravery.

Speaking our dreams awakens hope. It opens our hearts. It makes us stand a little taller, try a little harder, look a little further.

Maybe the dream won’t come true. Maybe God will transform it into something else. Something better, even. His ways are even higher than ours, so why not start with speaking the dreams He’s given us? It’s the only way to move toward seeing the bigger things He has in store.

Hope is scary. But so is letting it die. People keep asking me what I’m looking forward to in 2019. When I say, “My book getting published” it feels like a surreal, delightful dream come true.

I’m so glad I never gave up. And I’m so glad for those who heard my dream and wouldn’t let me forget it.

It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t spoken it out loud and invited others to encourage my dream.

My Challenge to You

So dream big this year, friends. Speak your dreams out loud. Anything from, “I’m going to run a marathon,” to, “I’m going to love better,” to, “I’m going to reach my neighborhood.”

What goals do you have as you begin this new year? What dream is stirring in you? Will you be brave to say it out loud?

Ask God to awaken something in you. Speak it out. Then see what happens.