What brings you joy? I’m not speaking in a Marie Kondo “if it doesn’t spark joy get rid of it” sense. I am asking, what fills your sails? What do you enjoy whether rain or shine, daylight or dark, weekdays or Saturdays? I believe our answer to the question holds the key to choosing direction in life.

My friend leveled her eyes at me and said, “You need to dream.” Sounds simple. Just 4 words. How can something that used to come so naturally feel completely foreign? Dreaming at almost 50 years old feels silly. Age is a trap if you let it be, and I am not at all fair to myself because of it.

Do you remember dot-to-dot activity pages? In the midst of my inward kicking and screaming over the 4-word challenge issued by my friend, dot-to-dot pages came to mind. Why-o-why am I so random? I wish I knew.  

I prefer life to happen in a linear fashion. A to Z, here to there, soup to nuts… precise paths to all the places. Do you remember the pages with lots of dots and tiny numbers, so many that you could not tell what the picture would be? Those pages irritated me. Even with a numerical path, sometimes I get irritated at the lack of knowing.

First, I saw their sweet, little faces through the glass door. One by one, every few minutes, another opened the door to the porch where their mother and I sat chatting. With each new approach, as a hand reached for the doorknob, I saw a burning question coupled with a hopeful demeanor. Mom, can I…? Mom, can we…? The age-old march of childhood boredom, displayed on a warm April afternoon by four of the cutest children ever.

As a child, life got lived minute by minute. I remember the march of boredom. When reading, coloring, and roving the neighborhood failed to entertain us, we got creative. Drawing straws, for who had to go ask permission to enact our latest plan, happened daily. Can you relate?

Childhood came to an end. The young adult years have passed. Now, I still find myself looking for what is next. For me, boredom is not the issue; needing direction causes my unrest.

I am living the white, picket fence lifestyle I dreamed of as a child. Prince Charming, check. Beautiful children, check. Great house, great neighbors, check and check. Now what? What do we do when we realize we’ve lived out into the years our young selves never thought to consider?

“You need to dream”. The words reverberated in my mind. My thoughts went immediately to a couple of things I daydream about. I keep them in the same category where careers like Marine Biologist and Astronaut live, fanciful and out of reach. I am likely neither to dive from Shamu’s nose nor walk on the moon. The things I daydream about feel that grandiose.

Can I just get the perfectly plotted out, dot-to-dot plan for my life? Doesn’t that sound nice?

I could only smile when all four of my friend’s children, followed by an extra from somewhere in the neighborhood, burst onto the porch from the outside door. “Guess what is in it,” one of them said, as she handed her mother a plastic easter egg. The children buzzed with excitement. A few seconds later the child took the egg and tossed it to the porch floor. Water burst from it and splashed those in its immediate vicinity. Squeals of joy erupted.

God started talking to me at that point. “What if, for once, you did not try to overcomplicate things?” “What if, instead of begging for permission or a map, you just did what brings you joy?”

The truth, in my life, happens to be that the things I daydream about are possible. I already do them in an extremely small-scale way… so small-scale I missed the connection. Dizzy from focusing on dots and numbers, I failed to see the bigger picture. I let myself be irritated from the lack of knowing while I stare day in and day out at the answer.

What brings me joy is encouraging others. As a child, I colored pictures for people. In my teens, I wrote short stories, poems, and silly songs. Now, I enjoy putting together creative gifts and sending little notes in the mail. All these individual things are dots. They are small, graspable pieces of the bigger picture that God is directing. I need only be faithful with today, then with tomorrow, and the days after those. As I continue to mature in faith, God will use what I enjoy to encourage more and more people with His love. I dream about those things.

I’ll ask again; what brings you joy? What do you dream about? When it comes to finding direction, we have to pay attention to the clues already before us. Think about what you enjoy. Can you find a link, perhaps, to your dreams?