Who Do You Want to Be? (Part 2)

Terry and Rick started their married life in Wisconsin.  They suffered the heartbreak of losing two infant sons, both of whom had congenital heart defects.  They had two healthy children, a boy and a girl, but the doctors counseled the couple that they should stop bearing children.  Terry always wanted a larger family though. So, for six years, this nurse and dairy plant manager worked through the adoption process.  Then, one day, they were blessed to have their new five-week-old child join their family. He came to them with some health concerns.  Mom, the nurse, thought her new son might even have cystic fibrosis.  But, as it turned out, he was just, in her words, “kind of sickly.”

About four years later the family moved to California where Dad, the dairy plant manager, found a new job.  Being from Wisconsin, and having caught the Packers fever, they took with them all sorts of Packers gear, cheeseheads and jerseys and bobbleheads.  So it was that their youngest son grew up surrounded by fans and gear of two professional football teams, the Packers and the Niners.  The sickly little boy grew out of his health problems and enjoyed living the childhood dreams of many American boys.  He wrote a letter to himself as a fourth-grader in which he expressed his own dream: to go to college to play football and then to play for either the Packers or the Niners.  A fine dream, young lad, but, let’s get real, son, these dreams are just childhood fantasies. Right?

Here is the mysterious thing about dreaming who we want to be. Sometimes, if we really believe it, and if we really work harder than everyone else at making the dream come true, the dream dies unfulfilled.  I mean, I was as certain as a fourth-grade boy could be that I was going to be President of the United States, and look how that turned out!  But, after years of pondering how God could have failed to deliver on my dream, I have now concluded that the secret to happiness is discovering not who I want to be, but to be the person God wants me to be. And to live God’s dream for me to the fullest. The secret to happiness is discovering God’s dream for us and then living it.

And sometimes God’s dream and little boys dreams align perfectly.  So, when you see Terry and Rick cheering for their son, Kyle Kaepernick, as he takes the field as a Niner in the Super Bowl, think about how God does make God’s dream for boys and girls and women and men come true.  What is God’s dream for you? Discover it. Live the dream.