I’ve always considered myself the kind of person who is
defined by her dreams. If you asked elementary-school-me, she’d tell you that
she wants to own a horse and go to Hogwarts. If you asked high-school-me, she’d
tell you that she wants to go to Notre Dame and maybe one day become a teacher.
If you ask me now, I’ll tell you about the school I want to open one day, the
cities I want to live in, and the books I want to write. My entire life I’ve
made list after list of aspirations. Perhaps this particular penchant came to a
head most, however, when I was in middle school. At the time, my entire life
was guided by a list I created and hung proudly on my wall. It included my three
dreams: 1- Go to England, 2- Get my pointe shoes, 3- Publish a book (preferably
in that order).
These three dreams guided most of my middle school life. I
spent tons of time in ballet class working hard and waking up extra early every
morning to practice on my own in the hope of getting my toe shoes. I spent every evening writing chapters for novels
and short stories in order to publish a novel. As for England, I bought guidebooks
and brochures to plan this potential trip and I read everything I could find about London and United
Kingdom. My desire to travel to England was a bit ridiculous for a while- I
wrote songs and journal entries about how badly I wanted to go there. I flared
with jealously whenever one of my friends travelled to the UK. I got angry with
my parents on several occasions for not being able to afford the trip. My
parents would often tell me, “You’ll get there one day.” But I was angry,
insisting, “I need to go there now.”
In the funny way things seem to turn out, my middle school
list of aspirations came true in a completely different order than I expected.
In a burst of perseverance and hard work, I figured out how self-publish my
“novella” when I was 13. When I was 14, with even more hard work and lots of
endurance, I passed the test to get my pointe shoes and finally fulfilled my dream
of dancing on my toes. The only goal that remained on my list, the one that I
had been most zealous to finish first, was going to England. I remained
frustrated at first, especially as more and more of my friends had
opportunities to travel in UK. Eventually I started studying French and took an
interest in travelling to France, and I added more and more places to my list
of future travel destinations. Despite all this, England always remained a
dream.
It was only two week ago that I finally checked off that
goal. I wanted to make the trip on my own so that I could really explore all of
the facets of the country that had sparked my imagination so many years ago. I
spent a weekend visiting a friend in Oxford. I spent 36 hours exploring
Edinburgh entirely on my own. I spent almost a week in London, staying with
family friends and then meeting up with other students from Notre Dame at
various points throughout the week. I got to do things that were so important
to me-
I got to see the Royal Ballet (the company that inspired me
to continue dancing) practicing in class and then later, performing a ballet. I
got to see my aunt’s favorite painting, The Bar at the Folies-Berege that I’ve
heard her talk about for years. I got to visit the Tower of London where my
mom’s favorite saint, Thomas Moore, died. I got visit the pub where CS Lewis
dreamed in Oxford and the café where JK Rowling wrote in Edinburgh, and
locations in London I’d imagined in stories I had penned myself. I got to watch
the sunrise from a mountain top in Scotland and watch it set over the Thames as
I walked along it with my friends. It was a week full of 21 years of imagined
places coming to life before my eyes. I was immersed in places that had
inspired me to think and dream, to dance and to write- the places that
captivated me so deeply that they changed the course of my life. And it was
everything I’d dreamed it would be.
I’m not sure why I was called to come to England now and not
when I was 12 or 16 or 20, but I know that the week I spent in Great Britain
was rich with fulfillment and bountiful with blessings. Growing up, my mom
would always tell me, as I came up with each new dream, “If God is giving you
this dream and this is really what God is calling you to do, then God will find
a way.” I know that going to England was a dream that God put in my heart and
it was definitely a place that I forever felt called to go, but what I didn’t
realize is that I had to trust God’s timeline. We want to have control of when
and where our aspirations happen, but the truth is that we can’t. God has
carefully crafted each of our stories so that everything happens at the right
moment. We can live lives defined by our dreams, but we also must remember to
surrender that list to God and trust that God will bring us to places and
people we are meant to experience. God is the writer of each of our stories. All
we have to do is trust that God will write the happy ending.
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