Dreams…

Dreams…I have dreams
when I’m awake, when I’m asleep…Brandi Carlisle

I fell in love twice when I was quite young. The first was with Robert Redford. The second…with horses. For most people my age that grew up with Redford’s movies it’s not a stretch of the imagination to go from one to the other.

Along with a successful acting career, Redford is a director, producer, environmentalist, philanthropist, activist for Native American rights, and the owner and creator of the Sundance Film Festival. The acreage, northeast of Provo, Utah, that Redford bought early in his career, is not only a haven for up and coming film writers, actors, producers and every aspect of the movie industry…but a refuge for wild mustangs.  

When I was younger I had a dream. I wanted to grow up and live out west. I wanted to be able to walk out my door, get on my horse and ride for hours without seeing another soul. I could see myself, stopping beside a mountain stream, drawing or writing the day away while my horse nudged me with its muzzle, anxious to be on its way. My grandfather had a horse named Fury and that was to be my horse’s name as well. A wild mustang, one that only I could ride with no saddle or bridle, my hands deep in its mane, flying across the open plains or climbing a mountain side.

It was only after seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did the idea of a cowboy companion enters my mind.

Both my parents grew up in Oklahoma and even though we lived in Southern Indiana, I knew that one day, I would meet my cowboy and out west we would go.

What kind of dreams did you have for your life when you were young? Did they come true? Are you still working towards them or have they changed throughout the years?

Everyone has dreams. Places they want to go, things they want to do, people they want to meet. Dreams are a way to inspire us, to help us strive to do our best, to accomplish a goal we set for ourselves.

But dreams can also keep us from reality. We sometimes hold onto a dream too long. It took me a while to realize I had outgrown that dream. That there were new dreams ready to take its place. At first I resisted…and because I did, I made myself miserable. Maybe I was afraid to let it go, because it was a constant, something I owned all by myself and I felt to lose it, was to lose myself.

But eventually I let God show me a new dream. It began with my son Derek. Derek was born in the fall of 1987 and the moment I held him, I knew that any future dreams I had would revolve around him. It was a little over a year later that Jim asked me out. As we dated, I watched Jim and Derek develop this wonderful relationship and as I watched, I saw a man that was patient and kind. A man that loved to be outside, enjoying nature, from fishing to walks in the woods. I began to dream a new dream.

After we married, we welcomed another son, Craig. And so I began to dream dreams of the boys and who they would grow to be…what kind of men they would become and what kind of women they would marry. What Jim and I would do or where we would be when our boys were grown and had homes of their own and children of their own.

Many of these dreams have come to pass. Derek and his wife, Brittany, are expecting our first grandchild in July. Craig and his fiancée’ will graduate college this spring and plan to be wed in June of 2014.

I never met my cowboy. I don’t own a horse and probably never will. I may never ride beside a mountain stream or ride across a field with no one around for miles. I will never have this dream. But I do know that if I had held onto it, I would never have this reality.

What are your dreams? Are they inspiring you to action or pulling you backwards? Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell the difference. But I know one thing. Once I allowed God into my dreams, I moved from a world of fantasy to one of reality. It’s not a perfect world by any means…but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Isn’t life strange…a turn of the page
A book without light…unless with love we write;
To throw it away…to lose just a day
The quicksand of time…you know it makes me want to cry….Moody Blues