The Better Dream

"Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, ordreams]-- " Eph. 3:20 (Amplified)

"I have a dream..."

That ubiquitous quote, which fell from the lips of Martin Luther King, Jr. nearly five decades ago, still resonates from the very soul of each human as we all, on some level, have a dream -- a dream for something better, deeper, more meaningful. A dream to make the world better, if not for all, then certainly for some.

I too have had many dreams over the course of the four decades I've walked this earth. In my teens, all was black and white. And I felt destined to whiten all the black that seethed around me. Ironically, my obsession for the white too often blinded me to the blackness within myself.

If you knew me in my twenties, I often rhapsodized about "changing the world." Funny thing was, God seemed more interested in using His world to change me. And so He did.

This last weekend I was reawakened to a dream of my past. A dream of my thirties. Some ten years ago, my friends Andi (now Horvat-Kavai) and Michelle (now Kummer) strolled along a lovely country road near the palatial Lillafured, Hungary. It was a time when God had seen fit to intertwine my heart and soul with the children of the nearby Diosgyori orphanage. On some level I carried the children and their pain with me for they had become so very dear to me.

As we strolled the rural path, taking in the pastoral landscape, we came upon some beautiful old, yet abandoned and deteriorating, homes. We each chose one and dreamed about what we would do if we had such a house to restore. I vividly remember chosing the red brick one. In it's day it must have been truly lovely: red bricking laced by wooden beams with a turret-like tower on one end. "That's my house," I had said." And it can be a children's home for all my kids." The melancholy faces of those orphanage kids flashed through my mind like a slideshow. It was my dream. It was a good dream.

On Saturday I found myself walking that same country road in the Bukk mountains. I saw the stately place Michelle had chosen for her dream that day so long ago. And then, just before we turned around to go back to the car, a lovely red brick edifice caught my eye and I was taken back to that dream of long ago.
When I walked this path before, I was a single woman with big dreams. We all were.

This time I stood before the house with an exceptional husband at my side and three children scurrying around, picking flowers, collecting snails, and splashing in the mud. One of the children was Andi, named after the friend I had traversed this road with more than decade earlier. The second was our adopted daughter, Niki -- adopted from that very same orphanage that stole my heart so long ago. And the third was Levi, sweet Levi, whom we are working to add to our family in the next few months. He currently lives at that same orphanage.

I don't expect I will ever live in that red brick house in Lillafured. But at the end of the day, it's just a facade of red clay and mortar, crumbling in its imperfection over time -- not so different from the malformed dreams I've crafted for myself over the years.

The three that stand before it are the better dream fulfilled -- "far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams"

Let's face it. God, Himself, crafts the better dream -- the dreams we never knew we had. Let's be willing to let go of our feeble, malformed dreams, however good they may seem, that we may not miss out on the better one.