Neon Dreams.

Last night, one of the Facebook groups I’m apart of posted a job that is currently available. I just decided to read what the job was just because why not. As I slowly scrolled down my screen, I began to realize that this job description I was reading describes my dream job. The title was a Humanitarian Access Advisor. Frequent field visits and strategizing the best ways to reach those in need. It literally was ticking every little thing I had described just before leaving the States as my dream position. Something I wasn’t sure it was even a real job or not.

I’ve always been a dreamer. While I was in high school, I remember grabbing a pencil and sketching out designs for the walls of my shared bedroom with my sister, all over the walls. I can recall my mom’s less than enthusiastic response to my excitement about the beautiful things I had sketched on my walls. She became even less pleased after I found shades of neon pink, orange, yellow, and green to fill in the designs while I had a few friends over. Here are a few of the old pictures I found on Facebook that show some of it. There’s also an OLD selfie thrown in from my room before I decided to paint my walls.

Oh wow. Gotta love those old blurry pictures from 2011-2012. Anyways, If you look closely at one of the walls pictured, I drew a giant “Dream BIG” in bubble letters filled in with the florescent colors. This is just one of the subliminal messages I can recognized looking back that reminded me to not limit myself based off of the surroundings I currently found myself in. If only I would have realized how much that would have helped me progress and push myself.

Nowadays, I don’t have any permanent living space enough to drastically paint my room neon (nor do I have any desire to bring back such bright tones into my bedroom). But I do have 4 pieces of permanent artwork. I have 4 tattoos. Each one grounds me and reminds me of things that I need to remember. I have a semicolon on my wrist that reminds me that no matter what God’s not finished writing my story. I have “Day by Day” written on my left foot to remind me that I don’t need to plan my life 50 years into the future, but instead to live each day in the present. I have a map of the world with “All Nations” written beneath it on my left shoulder. This one reminds me of my calling to go out into the world and show them the love that Jesus has shown me. My final tattoo is “Grace upon Grace” written on my right foot. This one reminds me to give myself as much grace as I give others because I am my own worst critic that can go beyond healthy levels. I honestly believe that these tattoos are one reason why my bipolar has stayed so stable over the past three and a half years.

These things are all reminders of dreams. My dreams are constantly evolving and changing as I meet new people, experience new things, and grow as a human being. But the other side of dreaming goes beyond just imagining what could be. I don’t think you can consider yourself a dreamer if you don’t ever take any action towards achieving them. If you just imagine things without taking action, you are just living in a fantasy land. That’s great in novels, but not so much in real life.

Before finding that job opening on Facebook, my masters program had a get together where the professors and students got to meet up and get to know each other a little bit. One of the professors there had actually been to Chicago which is about 4 hours north of where I grew up. I think that is the closest someone has been to where I grew up who wasn’t American that I’ve met so far in my program. He was honestly confused to some degree as to how I ended up in Malta of all places studying for a Masters degree. So many worlds apart from one another, but somehow dreaming (and spontaneous Google searching) have led me to where I am today. I’m making the steps I need to make to get where I want to go. The qualifications I need to get for the position are having a masters degree in the field, 5-7 years of experience, and fluency of another language. And I’m making progress on that. The process has begun, now just to start the hard work to get to where I want to go.