Chasing the Dream Part II

            I developed a passion for sprinting in elementary school that began in second grade when my teacher signed me up to do the 100 yard sprint for the school Olympics.  On the day of the race I was wore brown corduroy pants and Traxx shoes from K-mart.  They lined me up with a bunch of the boys, the gun went off, and I ran for all I was worth.  I won, and a legend was born, at least in my mind.  I honestly believed that I was the fastest kid in school all through elementary school.  My number of wins diminished throughout elementary school, but I still believed in the legend.  My speed, and with it my athletic confidence, left me in junior high school.  I played no sports until my sophomore year of high school when the track coach asked me to come join the team.  At the time I was honored, but as I look back we had a small team and he asked every kid to join.  He put me on hurdles, and I stuck with it because I felt he saw something special in me that would make a good hurdler.  Looking back, I noticed he put everyone who joined on hurdles because he knew if he could train hurdlers and pole-vaulters he could win most of the meets.

            I really worked at it and my technique became almost flawless.  I won a lot of races just because of that.  Over time I got better and by the senior year I just barely missed the school record.  I pictured myself a budding Olympian, but there was this nagging problem, I was not super-fast.  My heart was finally broken at Mount Miguel High School when this kid with awful technique beat me by a good 10 feet.  I was crushed, but in a way I was upset at myself because I knew the truth.  In the back of my mind I knew that I had fair speed but not blazing speed.  This was my broken dream moment. All the signs were there but I just got wrapped up in the fantasy of it all and chose to overlook the obvious.        

It’s not bad to play sports but it is silly to plan to play sports as a profession.  This also goes for professional singers, actors and the like.  These dreams or fantasies are killing us as a society and they create false hopes (Proverbs 12:11).  The odd thing about all this is that often we know it is a false hope, but don’t admit it to ourselves.  It is easy to just look past a glaring truth if you do not want to deal with the realities of that truth (Romans 1:18-20).  Our dreams must line up with something beyond us to truly fulfill us.  If we allow God to shape our dreams, we will be most happy (John 10:10).  Anything else is looking past the glaring truth.