Him: What’s stopping you from doing it?
Me: I don’t know. I can’t explain it…
Him: I don’t know you well, but I can tell you know what it is. And I’m pushing you to articulate whats holding you back.
Me: Okay, okay. I’m… I’m so… fearful.
Him: You’re fearful of being fearful?
Me: Yes.
Him: What’s the worst possible thing that could happen? What’s the worst case scenario? Lay it on me!
Me: I’m fearful of the consequences of following my heart and failing. I fear losing money on empty pipe dreams. I fear poverty. I fear inability to change what everyone seems to believe cannot. I fear failure and embarrassment and humiliation. I fear being a neglectful wife and poor step-mother and failing homemaker. I fear dreaming so big that I’m lost in the orbit of a universe outside of our galaxy… floating past the point of no return where I can’t come back and live a life I once did. But most of all, I fear the audacity of believing I can change the world and feeling ridiculous for believing I can.
Him: If all those things happen, are you still alive? Can you still dream? Will your family still love you? With all due respect Bianca, I don’t think your fear is of failure. No, your greatest fear is that you will succeed. And you don’t know what to do with that.
***
In pursuing the calling God puts in our life, what can fear kill? Everything. Fear will inhibit and thwart us from being the person we sense in our hearts we truly are. The one who is talented and compassionate and gifted. The one who is smart and logical and able. The one who is called and predestined and confirmed.
This conversation happened three years ago, but I still think of it often. I’m not the only one who has let FEAR kill a DREAM. But dreams and hopes and callings can be revived!
My husband Matt has a passion to revive and launch people into their dreams and calling them to discover what God has for them. For the third year in a row, he has designed an evening for people to gather and learn from the best and the brightest!
If you’re in the Southern California area tomorrow and want to learn more about getting over fears to discover your calling and purpose, you’re invited to the DREAM EVENT. Tomorrow from 6:30pm-8:30pm with Pete Richardson from the Paterson Center and Pastor Kenton Beshore from Mariners Church will poke and prod at us to push us to the calling intended for us.
***
Me: What are you dreaming of? What is stopping you?
You: _______________
[Register for the Dream Event HERE!]
Yep, I remember this conversation – let me rephrase that, I remember you blogging this conversation. And I remember you telling me if I came to America you would answer. I remember coming to America and presenting you with the print out of that very comment as you were driving me around Irvine. I remember you pointing out sights instead of answering. That was 2 years ago.
In answer to your question, I’m dreaming of sanity and the fact I’m crazy, as just displayed, is stopping me!
“Poke, prod and push”??? Sounds worse than a doctors appointment!! Ha ha. Great post B. I’m too shy and scured to be poked, prodded and pushed!!
I’m dreaming of getting out of school in a year and finding a job with at a place where I can actually help people, where I will be able to go where God wants me to go and do what he wants me to do. Through my current job God’s put in my heart the desire to care for foster children and adopting as many as I can support financially, to share the love of the Father to those who are fatherless.
But …
I’ll have a degree in Media studies which I have no idea what to do with, I’ll probably end up doing more school to get a secure job and as for the foster children well I don’t see marriage anytime soon. I do trust that God will lead me to where He wants me, that if I walk He will direct my steps. I won’t lie sometimes that truth is hard to see.