What of YOUR dreams?

A e-friend of mine wrote about the American Dream on her blog yesterday, and it set me thinking about my own dreams and aspirations. Dreams may be ambitions, yet not all ambitions are dreams, are they? Or is it simply that the ambitions that remain so-far unfulfilled are dreams, whilst those that we have fulfilled we regard as ambitions that have been achieved? Now, there's a point to ponder on dear reader.

What about your dreams and ambitions? Have you still got plenty that you want to achieve, and do you want it enough to ensure that you will achieve? Do you change or re-design your ambitions along the way in order to make them more achievable, or do you just keep plodding along in the hope that they will all come right in the end?

Perhaps you have one GREAT DREAM that you have followed throughout your life, achieving it bit-by-bit as you have travelled on life's journey. Whatever the answer is to these questions, the one thing that is really important is to set yourself real goals in life. I was going to qualify that statement by inserting the word 'achievable' into the sentence, but then I thought to myself that EVERYTHING is achievable if you are really determined to succeed.

One of the things that I often think about, (possibly my job has something to do with it!), is mankind's mortality, and of course that includes me. I guess that one thing that is common to the vast majority of people --- if not all people --- is that they want to be remembered after they have passed from this life to the next. For me that thought is definitely a strong driving force. If I'm remembered for something that I have achieved then it will prove that I was here, and it will mean that my being here mattered. Since the boy that I was started writing poetry as an 8-year old I have always striven to produce work of a standard that will speak to people and be meaningful in their lives. I have been fortunate in that I have had a lot of my work published over the years, and so it has been read by a broad and varied readership. However, I know that this will not necessarily mean that I'm to be remembered for it. After all, there are hundreds of others who have written far better work than I have over the years, and yet who are now largely forgotten. Yet knowing that, and considering that I may well join their company one day, acts as a spur to me to keep on trying. I guess that that's what is so special about the spirit that drives us from within, that we are driven by challenge, and the harder the challenge the more we are driven.

When I look back at my life I have been blessed continually by experiences that, although often not very pleasant at the time, I was able to learn from and thereby benefit. Those same experiences have been invaluable in my ministry as I have striven to help others overcome problems in their lives. They have also helped to point me to what I consider to be the one most important discovery of my life, and that is the fact of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. In retrospect I can see that I have never been left alone, even at those times that I perhaps thought I had. I have been watched over, guarded and protected, continually. I truly love God, and am grateful for his continual providence, especially for the wonderful gifts that I've been blessed with. That's why I try my best to give back to Him what He has blessed me with through the medium of the worship songs that I write. Perhaps then, these will be what I'm remembered for in the end. Yet having thought long and deep about it all, I think that the best way to be remembered is simply to be remembered as someone who worked hard for God. Yes, I think that, in the end, that will be more than sufficient to be the fulfilment of ALL of my dreams!