So many dreams, so little time...

I'm sitting in my house and all I can hear are appliances running.  All 4 of my children are sleeping!  What a treasure they are to me!  I spent most of last weekend at Hearts at Home in Rochester.  Hearts at Home is a great conference for moms to learn, fellowship, get a breather, etc.  I was blessed to be able to go, but my entire family came along plus my parents.  My youngest son will be turning 4 months on the 16th, and I wanted to be able to feed him while at the conference.  Since children are not able to attend the conference (so moms can get a bit of alone time) my honey said that the whole family could come and he'd care for them and bring me Victor at the right times.  What a sweetheart I married!  My parents came along to help wrangle the kiddos.  They're sweet too!
You may be wondering what all of this has to do with my title.  The truth is that I went to a workshop where I heard Sherry Surratt (President and CEO of MOPS) speak about dreaming big.  Wow!  Even now thinking about it brings tears to my eyes for some reason.  I'm a dreamer!  I think I always have been from my days of playing house as a child to my story writing to what I want for my children.  Dreams are powerful and they are the things that help us keep striving through life some days.  Dreams can be little or big (and I find are closely tied on occasion to my prayer life).  When I became a mother, my dreams for myself hit a bump in the road.  One of my dreams was to be a mother, and I so enjoy being a mom, but being a mother is consuming of so much time and resources.  And when I became a mom my selfish nature became so evident.  My sleep was interrupted, my routine (or lack there of) was changed, my time with my honey was limited (and sometimes completely gone), and my dreams were put aside or altered.
How do I reconcile my dreams with my momdom?  Can it be done?  Can I have the mommy life that I love full of hugs, kisses, I love yous, messes, imaginings, and so much more and my dreams for me too?  This is a question that I'm currently trying to get a handle on.  Where does God want me to dream?  What things (as Sherry said) does God want me to dream about?  Writing?  Traveling?  Hobbies?  Friendships?  Women's ministry?  Running?  Learning about nutrition?  Or would my time be better served dreaming about family culture?  Teaching and training my kids?  Decorating a boys' room and a girls' room?  Memorizing Scripture as a family?  Planning meals for two weeks?  Teaching the kids a new skill?
I'm not sure what the answer is for me, but I trust God to lead me to it.  He has a way of blessing us in ways we don't know are possible.  He dreams bigger for us than we dream for us - but bigger doesn't necessarily mean more money, a bigger house, or a bigger boat.  Bigger might mean more family time, more opportunities to bless others in His name, more chances to grow in our walk with Christ.  Dreams should never be trampled out, especially the dreams of our children.  They are treasures to care for!  Dreams might need their own special place to reside.  Perhaps in a journal where they can be collected with other dreams and prayed over and looked through later to see what God has done with them.
Dreams have a place in our lives - sometimes they are the first step to starting goal setting.  You dream of losing 50 pounds and feeling/looking healthier, so you set goals to reach that dream.  Goals that include exercise and eating better and finding a walking buddy.  Or you dream of touching the lives of orphans across the ocean, so you do research, find an orphanage that has needs, and begin to gather people around you that have the same dream.  Lives will be changed!
List out five dreams that you've had for over two years.  Begin to pray over your list on a regular basis, asking God to guide you to one dream on that list.  After you know which dream God is leading you toward, begin to pray specifically about ways you can pursue that dream, goals you can set, little/big steps you can take toward it, people that can help you make your dream a reality.  Then begin to implement those things.  Sometimes dreams stay dreams because we are afraid to take that first baby step of faith.  The doubts come, the questions in our head start to be louder than any other voice around us, and the fear creeps in.  Trust God to lead you to the dream he has for you in his time.  Timing is part of God's perfect will for us.
Blessings to you all!  :)
Hearts at Home
Sherry Surratt
MOPS