Just add water....

I look like a grown up but still possess the mind of a child. Or perhaps I should say, I am still fascinated by the simplest things.

We are hoping for a garden this summer so this morning the kids and I were at the dinning room table planting seeds in a little domed tray.

In this tray were small hard peat pellets: an inch in diameter, maybe a 1/4 inch high. However when you added a scant 2 tablespoons of water they magically grew into 1 1/2 inch tall peat pots filled with moist soil all ready for seeds. We did this with 72 pellets and marveled each time!

I am part of a group that is thinking and talking through a book by Chris and Kerry Shook, One Month to Live: 30 Days to a No Regrets Life. The premise of the book is simple: if you knew you had only 30 days to live, how would you live your life? The hope is that after thinking through how you are currently living and how you would live, that you will start to really live your life instead of just slogging through your time here on the planet.

The first section is about living life purposefully and that means using your time and pursuing your dreams. It then had a follow up question of, "What are your dreams?”

Now that's a great question for a group of kids, even college students – “What are your plans you who are still filled with idealism and invincibility?”
It's a different question when discussed among a group of people twenty years or so into adulthood. I remember, I did have dreams…what were they again???
Old dreams. long ago dried up and forgotten.
But what if a little water was added?

I was given water in the form of someone, quite randomly, saying to me “I think you’d be really good at….”. There was a time I’d thought the same thing but then, well….you know how it goes.
Then someone else said something similar, and when I was telling several friends about this idea they all said “Oh yea, I’ve always thought you’d be great at that”.

This dried up, flattened dream began to expand: and I started thinking about it’s possibility and how this could work and a seed was planted and some plans have been made.

My dinning room table is a long way from my garden and an expanded peat pot with a seed is a long way from a sunflower but it is a start. If it blossoms or not, the process has begun and it feels good to be hoping for the possibility of fulfillment.

At one place the book says that, "Sometimes we don't even realize what we were made to do, what really energizes and delights us, until we're forced into it, kicking and screaming. C.S. Lewis said that too often we're like children who settle for playing in mud puddles when the beauty and immensity of the ocean are just a few feet away." (pp 44)

It seems strange that you could be all grown up and still not realize that you are uniquely gifted for a particular thing. Or maybe it’s something you realized about yourself a long time ago and then forgot, that was swept away to a corner in the busyness that is making a living.

Are there any small dried up dreams in your life that just need the support of a little warm water?

Are there dreams you recognize in the lives of those you love that could just use a little encouragement?