God gives us dreams, but they can appear lifeless through the lenses of our circumstances.  The truth is that God doesn’t forget about us or our dreams.

Hubby’s a hard worker.

When it’s his turn to do so, Hubby gets up at the crack of dawn to do the five o’clock morning feed for CJ.  Seeing I’m a light sleeper,  my dear husband stays up to watch the sun rise rather than slip back under the covers. Before he can pour himself a second cup of coffee, Hubby’s working the short order cook station for our three year old early riser, scrambling the morning eggs and toasting the bread. Just so I can catch a few zz’s.

Then, he jumps into his family man telephone booth and turns into Super Cubicle Worker!

By the time Hubby makes it back home to work the “evening” shift with me, I wanna make sure my man’s got a good homecoming.  At the top of the list, right up there with a hug and a kiss, is making sure the fridge is stocked with ice cold WATER.

Keeping the fridge stocked with bottles of water isn’t such an easy feat though… lemme tell ya’.

In the late afternoons, I’m flying through the Bermuda Triangle, with a baby fried in one corner, a toddler re-enacting Platoon in the bathroom sink, and myself in a mad frenzy, knife in one hand, prepping dinner.

As I swing open the fridge to pull that onion out of the crisper, I notice something is terribly wrong.  There are no water bottles. Shoot!  I forgot to reload.

I make a dash to the garage, grab a couple of “fizzy water” bottles and shove them into the freezer to get them cold in a hurry.

Okay!  Everything is o-k-a-y.

Halfway into our meal, chewing on a bite of pasta, I realize something dreadful. The water bottles are still in the freezer.

They were forgotten. Now, they’re frozen.

Sometimes, we can feel the same way about our dreams.

Dreams may appear forgotten.

I’m not referring to the small dreams we have when we sleep deep enough to hit REM.  No, I’m talkin’ about the big dreams.  The unspoken ones buried deep inside.   The dreams that seem to end up frozen.

Sometimes God will give you a dream that may appear forgotten.  Others around you may shake their heads and console you with a hand on your shoulder.  You may look at your circumstances and find it odd why they’re not matching up with the dream God’s given you.

When I see my dreams locked up in time, just sitting there getting colder by the year, I can lose hope.  I wonder if I missed some clue along the way, a mistake I committed or some turn in the road I wandered off from.

Regrets, missed opportunities, failed.  Too late.

These are the words that find their way into my spiritual vocabulary.

God never forgets.

Then, I think of Joseph in the Bible, who was given a dream.  The young dreamer.  He was sold by his brothers as a teenager and spent the prime of his youth in jail.  Forgotten and used by another prisoner who got out of jail with his help, Joseph’s dream seemed to melt into a childhood memory.

God never forgot about Joseph’s dream. He never forgot about him.

When the time was right, God thawed out the dream that appeared frozen.

From uneducated, Israelite slave and convict, Joseph rose to become the highest ruler in a foreign country, second to Pharaoh.

Grace, second chances, sovereign.  Never too late.

How’s that for new spiritual vocabulary?

What are your dreams?

Which ones appear frozen?

And if a dream is dying, God will return to you a new one, better than you’d know.

Give them all to the Lord.  He’ll do what my Honey does when I hand him a bottle of frozen H2o.  He’ll say, “No worries, Bonnie.  We’ll just thaw them out.  They’re still good.”