How To Find the Dream

I walk home everyday after dropping the girls off at school. Except when I don’t. Straight through town amidst the traffic and the busy of a new day waking up.

The bridge near the school takes me over a bunch of train tracks and down a hill. That same sidewalk passes the Deutsche Bahn station with the McDonald’s and the newsstand and the taxis and the crowds. I often hear a German lady’s voice informing travellers of the next departure. Where to go. When to be there. I always catch myself thinking how fun it would be to just hop on a train and end up in Prague. Or Vienna. Or anywhere but here.

The thought makes my heart beat fast every time I think it. Because I could do it. I could literally get on a train and end up in another fascinating country I’ve never seen.

Then the beating slows when I remember the kids. The ones I will pick up from school in less than 5 hours. I wouldn’t have time to fit it all in and still be back in time.

I smile anyway. Because it’s not geography that holds me back. It’s love. It’s not finances or time that keep me from getting on a train and voyaging to some dreamily unfamiliar place. It’s the right where I am. Here. Now.

I realize how often I dream of what I do not have. Where I might be in a year. What I might have when I’m 65 and retired. Where I might go for my 17th wedding anniversary. What I might do when we move back home six months from last week.

I live the dreamily unfamiliar right now. And not just because I live in a foreign land. Every day is a new. Unfamiliar. Unknown. And what I have inside of now is God’s grace to soak it up for all it’s worth.

What if this is the dream? What if I’m wasting the right now because I don’t realize I’m inside of it? How can I unwrap it in all its sometimes messy, often scary, always beautiful glory?

By the time I reach the Opera House, I am almost home. I turn right and go up the hill right past the statue that shows off snowflakes with awe-inspiring distinction. I usually stop for some groceries along the way. Will I miss the grocery-getting next year? I wonder. I doubt it. But you know what? I’m going to soak up even the shopping and the hauling home because this is the living. Right now is the gift.

Are you missing the gift of right now, too? Let’s soak it up together.

Joining Emily at Chatting at the Sky today for another unwrapping of the ordinary life of Tuesdays.

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