4105 Balloons

4105 balloons. Can you imagine what that would look like in someone’s hand? I mean, even the balloon salesmen walking around Disneyland before the parade only carry about 50, maybe 100. I think that if a person tried to hold 4105 helium balloons, it would be enough to carry them into the clouds like an uncontrollable hot air balloon.

Sometimes I feel like I have so many dreams for my life that I think they might carry me away into the sky and I’ll never have my feet on the ground long enough to make any of them come true. But I know that, even with my head already in the clouds, I am able to keep my feet planted firmly because of the foundation that holds them – Christ, the solid rock.

Like most people, my balloons come in different sizes. There are the tiny ones for decoration on the edge of my personality, like my childhood dream of becoming a children’s book illustrator. While I still have the ability to take that dream somewhere, it is not my main goal in life and has therefore dwindled away, smaller and smaller, but still floats above my head as an unfulfilled dream.

Other balloons have grown to bursting, pulling at their strings and begging me to let them fly. The biggest dream at this point in my life is for me to become a musical missionary, taking the Word of God to other countries and impacting the world through teaching music. But I cannot take this dream somewhere until I am completely prepared to let it overtake my life. This balloon is so big that I cannot hold onto it alone, but I am becoming more prepared to make the dream a reality by learning as much as I can about education, music, and Christ.

Still other dreams drag behind me like popped balloons, still connected to my heart and personality but merely unusable memories. For example, my aspirations to become an astronomer so that I could gaze at the stars professionally quickly popped when I took an astronomy class at the college. While I absolutely loved everything I learned about the night sky, I came to grips with the fact that math and I don’t get along as well as is required to make that dream come true. So that dream drags behind me, popped and pitiful, but still a beautiful aspect of my personality.

Trying to keep my feet on the ground, I often struggle to hold onto all my dreams. They tug at their lines, begging to be freed as I walk down the road of life trying to take them somewhere. I am realizing as time goes on that God gave me these specific dreams for a reason and that they make me who I am. He asks me to nurture and use each dream with all of my strength until…. One day…. When I can’t hold onto them any longer, he is going to ask me to give them up and let them fly away. Once I let go of each dream, he makes them bigger than I could ever imagine. I can trust him with my dreams, because he is the one who put the air into them anyway.

4105 balloons. That’s a lot of balloons. But Christ carries them all, and he does so with both style and control. Without Him, we will float away. With Him, we can walk by his side and enjoy the dream forever.