Discovering Dreams {on #Writing}

It’s only March and my rhubarb is unfurling.
In the frozen, snow-covered parts of the country, Spring is only a word on a page somewhere near March 21st, but it has hit full force (early) here in the Pacific Northwest.

The rhubarb is pretty lonely. I had grand plans to get some spinach seeds in the ground last month but well, here it is March….
I have been pining over seedlings and seed catalogs since early December. Nothing got ordered.
No trips to the neighborhood nursery for the newest and best.
So many good ideas.
So much work.

The stray sweet pea seeds have already started twirling in the soil, I’m sure there’s a nasturtium seed or two. The mint is definitely trying to take over (I thought I’d pulled it all out!)
The garlic leftovers have managed to send up shoots–who knows what else might be lurking there?

My un-planted garden mirrors something I’ve been reading in ‘A Million Little Ways-Uncover the Art you were Made to Live’, by Emily Freeman, founder of Hope*Writers.

Emily posits the idea (p. 59) of the difference between ‘discovering’ and ‘recovering.’

“More often than not, finding out what you love doing most

is about recovering an old love or an inescapable truth

that has been silenced for years, even decades.

So instead of setting out to discover this thing you love doing,

you’ve got to change your thinking and set out to recover it, maybe even rescue it.”Hmm….. Each season I check our area’s Plant Picks for the best and greatest that I want to have in my garden.

Something new.
Something different.
Something beautiful.

Instead of all that hard work, what if this year I simply set about uncovering the garden to recover what had been lost? Maybe rescue some things….?

It would be like a reunion with what was already there, but only hidden………like a treasure.

“Our passions aren’t the goal, Emily says, but they are signposts,

like arrows pointing to our center.

Here is the path to the deepest part of who you are,

how you are made, the poetry of your soul.” (p. 60)

Maybe God is calling you (like He’s prodding me), to uncover some of the brambles and brush in my soul–the layers I’ve used to hide the real me.
Maybe He’s daring you to dig beneath the layers, expose the hidden things to the light and reveal the dreams that He’s put there in the first place.
Instead of being ‘suspicious of (my) desire’, or my capacity for making beauty, I’m learning to rest in the truth of my ‘image-bearing identity’ that glorifies God.
I’m daring to expose the soil of my barren soul, the ‘me’ that God made when I was created. I want to begin looking instead for what might be growing there already….the poem God has written on my heart that only I can live.

“Having a dream is a reflection of the image of God.”

A Million Little Ways, Emily Freeman, p. 67

What dreams is God uncovering in you today?