If you never try, you'll never know

43% raised/pledged: 29 DAYS!

"No matter how prosaic, practical, and ploddingly unimaginative we may be, we have dreams like everybody else. All of us do. In them even the most down-to-earth and pedestrian of us leave earth behind and go flying, not walking, through the air like pelicans. Even the most respectable go strolling along crowded pavements naked as truth…

… The tears of dreams can be real enough to wet the pillow and the passions of them fierce enough to make the flesh burn. There are times we dream our way to a truth or an insight so overwhelming that it startles us awake and haunts us for years to come."
--Frederick Buechner excerpt from "Whistling in the Dark"

I have this problem... I think I dream too much. The problem is not really in the quantity of my dreams, its in the quality. I have a lot of extremely vivid and passionate dreams for my life and my future. I worry that it is dangerous for my heart to be attached to things that are not really there. There has to be a line between real and attainable goals for my education, career and future and the little girl dreams of my future husband, family and the hopes I have for us. Where is that line? When have I let it go too far?

On a slightly unrelated note, I have had a hard time being willing to share my heart. Pain, heartbreak and broken trust in my past have brought me to this point. To the point at which I am so afraid to be vulnerable, because of the possibility of hurt. I am so afraid to expose my heart to that danger. Afraid to tell people how I really feel about them. I need to be better about this. I don't want to miss the opportunity. I don't want anyone to ever doubt my love for them. If I stop to think about it, my heart has already been given away- I just need to accept it. Each of my friends has a little piece, another has a pretty big chunk and God has the rest. The possibility for hurt is already there. Please don't break me again.


Richard shared this with me yesterday, and I just loved it, so I thought I would share too:
"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up sage in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to god's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness... We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it."
-- C.S. Lewis