“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I had a dream last night that was so clear. I was scheduled to preach in a church and while I was practicing my sermon, I became so late that I couldn’t shower or even dress for the sermon. Someone called and asked “where are you?” and I had to just go on undressed, unwashed, holding my baby who was crying and preaching from the heart that “God has a plan. And if you don’t listen, you end up here, unshowered and undressed, holding your baby and living it out. God has a plan, and if you don’t hear it in the whispers, you will bow to it’s shouts. God has a plan and the only thing you have to do is get on your knees and listen.” I told the story of how I asked my beloved dad when he was 78 years old the question of how he seemed to go through life without any speed bumps and his answer was “obedience.” He told me that he at each point in his life when he was in doubt felt God’s hand guiding him and just tried to follow, sometimes hesitantly and sometimes boldly. I told the story of listening to an Oprah Soul Sunday podcast where she talked about listening to the whispers that we hear because if we don’t, the voice gets increasingly louder. I told the story of how I was practicing a sermon I’d written – but it was from the head and so circumstances forced me to show up and deliver what I knew from my heart. I pointed at my baby and said “God has a plan for him at his age” and pointed at a 93-year-old friend in the audience “and God has a plan for her at her age and for all of us in between.”

I’m neither a theologian nor a preacher – my dad was. I don’t usually remember my dreams or put great store in them. But this dream had the ring of Truth so that even in writing about it, I get a shiver of respect. It brings together many things I’ve heard over the last few months and made them fit. Bishop Michael Curry talking about “thin places” as moments when the Truth of God is somehow more apparent and accessible. Poet Nikki Giovanni talking about her belief that nothing in our lives is wasted. That “you are always taking what ingredients you are given and making what you can make. My grandmother didn’t waste. There was nothing that came into her kitchen that she didn’t find a use for. I feel the same way about experience and words.” Rev. Dr. Scott Dudley asking “How big is your God? Is he bigger than your worries?” All three of these things slot into place with the essence of this dream. That somehow all my worries – about my kids going back to school, the details of my work, the how of my life, the fears that I will never fall in love again – get packed into a manageable box. That the only thing I have to do is live into this faith that all the good, bad and the ugly fits into a plan. And there is something bigger than myself, God, that is weaving it together. All I have to do is listen.

I write this to you because I’ve struggled with this all of my life. First as a child believing without question but also without substance. Then in my 30’s not really giving faith much of a thought at all and suffering because deep down I knew there was more to life. And now in my 50’s when it seems like I am continually having a-ha moments that bring my faith, experience and the patterns of life together so that it all makes sense – to my head and my heart. I write this to you because whether you believe and feel the jolt of affirmation or don’t believe and store the words away until some time in the future when they are ripe for you, I feel it is every individual’s job to speak the Truth of their own life. Because God has a plan and all we have to do is listen.