To Bodly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

When I was little I always had the biggest dreams for what I wanted to do when I grew up. For years I wanted to be an astronaut. Not a normal astronaut, but a ballerina astronaut. That's right. I wanted to dance on the moon with my pink tutu on the outside of my space suit. Silly things like temperature and weight of the space suit couldn't daunt my dream.

Sometimes my dreams are just to be a good older sister... 

When I realized that I was afraid of looking down on things, and thought that maybe looking at the earth from that high up might freak me out, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. Not a normal teacher, but an art teacher. I wanted to roll in to school every day on my roller skates and be called "Professor Triplett". That dream ended when I realized that both my father and my uncle were called "Professor".

Once my dad told me to wrap a bowl with plastic wrap, and I did it so well, that for a few months, all I wanted to do was to be a professional plastic-wrapper. (To his credit, my dad did not dissuade me).

When Harry Potter first came out, I wanted to be the next J.K. Rowling. I tried and tried to write about anything and everything that came to mind, but I was always only able to write a page or two before I grew bored. I still can't write anything longer than twenty pages, and if it's a creative story? Forget about it.

The new dream was to be on Broadway. Despite the fact that every actor's dream is to be on Broadway, and that there are droves of talented thespian, I love being big, outlandish, unrealistic, and energetic. So Broadway seems to be the natural choice. I mean, there aren't many careers that you can say you absolutely love, right? Might as well shoot for the moon.

What do all these dreams have in common?

They all have to do with impacting others and how they remember me. I think that even at a young age I wanted people to remember me. I wanted to be remembered by what I did for humanity. I wanted people to look me up in a history book and be remembered as the next Jane Goodall, or the better Picasso. And I still have that desire even today. I still have the insatiable desire to be important. To be needed. To be great.

Everyone else had tangible goals and dreams to achieve greatness. To be a doctor, to be a politician, to be a mother. None of the same desires for greatness seemed to penetrate the dreams my friends had. I seemed to be the only power hungry one of the bunch. Of course, if you had asked me, I would never have said I was power hungry. I would have just said I was ambitious, even though I didn't know quite where the ambition was directed.

Of course, at the time I couldn't see that I was power hungry. I thought that everyone suffered from the same desires. I thought that everyone didn't care what they did, just so long as people remembered them for it.

I sound like a terrible child.... Don't I?

I really did want to do good things, I really did want to be the person to end world hunger and to clothe the naked, and to free people from prison. I wanted to do good things for others. The very first dream I ever remember having was to run an orphanage. I wanted to provide these children with a better life, even though I was no more than I child myself. But where I was getting lost was the fact that I wanted to be remembered as a good person, rather than to actually be a good person.

My motivation was just a little skewed.

I realize now that wanting to do those things simply for the sake of recognition is no useful motivation to do them at all. What does it matter that other people think I am a great person if I did great things simply to be great? Am I truly good if I only did good things in order to be remembered as good? Or did I act out of love for my fellow man?

Sometimes I still wonder what I want to do. Do I want to pursue these things because I think that they will make me be remembered? Or do I want to follow these dreams because they are avenues that I love? Do I want to go and be a missionary because I will convert people to Christianity, or because I think that my brothers and sisters should hear about the love GOD has for them? Do I want to teach because I want to be remembered as a spectacular teacher, or because it is for the good of the CHILDREN? Do I want to do good things out of the goodness of the deed, or the goodness it will bring others?

Sometimes I don't think I've changed much. I still want to be great. I still struggle with the difference between being great for myself and being great for the Lord. For a while I thought that I couldn't have dreams of being great after I realized that I was too prideful for my own good. I thought that God wanted me to give up all the dreams I had of changing the world. And for a while I did. However, I wasn't able to give them up completely. Even when I said that I wouldn't want to be great in this way, I would begin thinking of different ways that I could achieve history.

It was only in totally giving my pride and ambition to the Lord that I realized I did have to give these up all the way. I couldn't just say that I was giving them up and then think about how I could be awesome. I had to hand them to God and see what He would do with them.

I very recently asked God to help me overcome my pride. I handed God all the delusions that I had had since childhood. Trembling, I held none of my desires back. And afterwards I have begun to feel a slight difference. I still want to be great. I still want to change the world. But I feel so much happier and better about it now. Because I realize that I can't do anything without Jesus and that He wants me to be great as well. He doesn't want me to give up my dreams of changing the world, rather He wants to use them for the advancement of His kingdom. I suppose I didn't realize this until very recently, but the Lord wants to change the world as well. And Jesus could come and change the world Himself if He felt so inclined, but He really wants us to join in as well.
The Lord doesn't want to take my dreams and chew them up and then spit them back at me. He wants to do things with me, and if what I am good at will bring about his kingdom, as well as bring me closer to what I love, then why wouldn't He use my dreams and desires? I mean, isn't He the one who gave them to me in the first place?

He doesn't want me to use my ambition for myself, because in the end that wouldn't make me feel happy or fulfilled. He wants me to change the world through simple acts of love and acceptance, and even though right now I feel like that isn't much, the Lord knows my desires better than I do. He isn't asking me to diminish my greatness, but He wants to be the center of it. He wants me to change the world through my love for Him, as well as my love for others. If I loved others as Christ loves them, and I treated everyone as I would want to be treated, who would ever remember me in any other way than what I originally wanted? And really, when you think about it, isn't that the only way worth being remembered as?