Delayed Dreams

God loves to "pace our dreams" but we think He's "delaying our dreams"

and in doing so we misinterpret what is a gift, as a punishment.

Jon Acuff - Stuff Christians Like

My biggest challenge each day is how long I can delay taking Lucy out for a walk when I get home.  Usually I just want to come home, chill, AND THEN get around to doing all the "stuff" that needs to get done.  But, alas, my sweet girl will have NONE of that.  In her puppy dog world, me walking through the door signals a WALK followed by dinner and then... oh joy oh joy... a T.R.E.A.T. (You can't say that word in my house.. at all.  Even in public I find myself spelling it out.)

Tuesday, of course, was no exception.  EXCEPT I had neglected to bring my running shoes to work with me, so I wanted to grab my shoes and hit the gym before doing all that other "stuff."  There was no way Lucy was letting that happen.

Ain't no way.

Ain't no how.

Getting T.R.E.A.T.S. is the highlight of Lucy's day. So my thinking was that if give her a treat now, that I could go to the gym without taking her out.  I give Lucy her 2 Ol' Roy Peanut Butter biscuits and she took them and hightailed it to the front door - biscuits in mouth.  No amount of reasoning with her was going to change that fact that we were going for a walk NOW (she is a dog, after all). And those treats were coming with her (Lucy's also been trained that if she leaves any treat on the floor, it gets picked up.  She's been known to carry a rawhide bone around for days.  My girl is one smart cookie.)

Surely she'd drop the treat in the yard before we reach the sidewalk and take our usual route.

Nope.

Lucy took her entire walk with her treats in her mouth.  (I SO wish I had gotten a picture of her - she looked rather silly.)  To Lucy, those were her nightly treats - all she'd get for the night.  There was no way she was giving them up.  Little did she know, that if she had just gone ahead and eaten them right away and let me go to the gym, that when I returned, we would have gone about our regular routine and she would have gotten more treats.

Later while I was working out, I thought about Jon Acuff's quote on delayed dreams. And I thought about how much I'm like Lucy.  God gives me little snippets of what He's doing to do.  Instead of letting Him work in His time, I get all bent out of shape because I think He's just dragging His feet - delaying my dreams. 

I don't necessarily think that Lucy thought she was being punished by having to walk around with treats in her mouth.  I do know that I think God is punishing me by pacing my dreams.  Instead of enjoying what God is showing me or giving to me now, I hold on to it, dwelling on it, because I'm sure it's all there is.  Instead of trusting that there is more - more than I could possibly think or imagine - I'm confident this is as good as it gets.

I miss the gift of delayed dreams by being short-sighted. 

I miss savoring my T.R.E.A.T.S. now.