The imagination is a powerful thing. I believe that it can be a wonderful gift given by God to have a vivid and creative imagination. As a child, I enjoyed this gift creating all sorts of play worlds with my siblings. I could entirely be existing in a different space and time through my imagination. It was also wonderful to be completely immersed in a book. I would be so engrossed with the story I was reading, that I literally would not hear the dinner bell (yes, we used a dinner bell in my family but that is another blog entirely on its own). My mom would get frustrated with me when I honestly and fervently protested that I had not heard it. All I had heard were the sounds of the conversations and adventures that the characters were having in the book I was reading.
However, this imagination and innate ability to transport myself to a story or make-believe is turning out to be a struggle for me as an adult. Of course, it still comes in handy when I need to get away and all I want to do is watch the sunset and think on things. Or when I'm writing and I can completely see the images in my head before I put them on paper. And it still comes in handy when I would rather exist in someone else's storybook. But, I have found that I have begun to rely on my imagination a little bit too much in my day to day and have started to "live" there because I don't know how to cope with what is real. Not that my life is a horrible mess...not at all!...but just that there are things in my life that continue not to turn out the way that I had hoped. And to deal with that, I imagine what I hope to happen and then come crashing down when the hopes I've built up in my head are not occurring in my reality. Disaster. I've built up my own expectations and hopes only to be let down by...myself. Needless to say, I need a reality check.
This is easier said than done. I have always thought things out in my imagination before actually doing them. I run through all the different options and possibilities and put thought into how I should react and what I should say so that I don't look a fool and shoot from my hip with my mouth. How do I break a habit that is so thoroughly ingrained in how I live out my life and relationships? This can also be a good quality as it does help me prepare for things that should be thought out carefully (a therapy session, a presentation at work, a serious relationship talk), but to always try to plan and consider and prepare for all the possible scenarios is exhausting! And it is even more exhausting to realize that the only person who is letting me down is me.
So while I will always be a daydreamer and will utilize that to it's fullest and hope for the best, I am hoping to work on the skill of recognizing what is reality and accepting it just as that. I'm tired of tripping myself up. I'm also tired of taking control of what I think should be instead of trusting in God to provide me with vision and resolve and patience. I have spent the better half of the past year asking God to teach me how to trust Him in this season of life. I think that this is one area where I could learn to trust that God will help me with my daily conversation and actions. I want to trust that no matter what my imagination cooks up, that God will be there to remind me to hope in Him alone and not in my own limited sight of what could or could not be. I wasn't aware of what I have been asking for and I know that I will be a more full and complete woman in the end. However, learning to trust that I can rely on God for the best visions for my life is hard. Even in my daydreams, I know this to be true and that is a reality I can trust.
