Vision

On June 15, 2011, Stephanie Bryant, cofounder of (in)courage.me wrote about vision:

According to George Barna, vision is a “clear mental picture of a preferable future imparted by God to His servants based on an accurate understanding of God, self & circumstance.”

But the secret to having vision for your life? To cling to the Father, to know His mind and heart for you. To know who you are in Christ. And to be aware of your surroundings and landscape that you’ve been planted in.

A clear mental picture of where I want to be in the future…

Know who I am in Christ…

I hesitate- I have not had enough coffee for such a profound project…

When I was younger, I had a huge vision. A plan I had devised when I was in 8th grade that took me to my twenties. That vision got me through some very hard times. Focusing on the goals I set helped me move forward when all I wanted to do was stay in bed and eat chocolate.

In a class in Nursing School, they made us write our five year plan as part of a scholarship application. It was to include personal as well as professional goals. I wrote about wanting my private pilot’s license, passing the RN exam, reading War and Peace, the Bible and Gone with the Wind and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in a hospital in Africa. An odd hodgepodge of things.

Surprising nobody more than myself, I was awarded the Rudin Scholarship. $1,000- A real fortune. I was carrying 17 credits at the time so I could graduate in June, and the award allowed me to work a little bit less, and was a huge blessing. (Over a decade later, I met the Rudins at an event and was able to thank them personally for this tremendous gift.)

Did I achieve all my goals? I passed the Nursing Boards, read the books while I served in the Peace Corps, but I served in Guatemala, not Africa. I bootlegged flying lessons from my friend Julius- an incredible gift- but my vision issues made a private license impossible.

So I need a new five year plan. I need to decide where my preferred future lies. I am going to need to work on this, ponder it, and figure out where I am going or I will never get there.

I will keep you posted.