There are two times of year I most love to be alive – fall and fall. Ok, that’s one, but for me it holds double weight. It’s the time of year on the farm when things begin to change rapidly. Calves begin to drop daily, along with the temperature and the leaves on the trees. The changes always seem to come faster than I’d like and winter sets in earlier than I wish. But that also makes these days of change even sweeter – knowing they won’t be around for long.

It’s also the time of year when I turn another year older, and that tends to make me reflect. Especially now that I’m *almost* officially the age that I deemed my parents “old.” Funny how the eyes of a child define that much different than the same eyes when they reach that age. And even though I still have my eyesight (for at least another year, I hope…), I am starting to see things differently.

I’ve been considering all the labels I’ve had put on me by others and even myself throughout my life. Some probably right. Some definitely wrong. But until the last few years I would’ve never labeled myself a dreamer or an artist. It’s not that I never entertained dreams for my life, but I never took the time to give them a lot of thought and certainly not to live into them or expect them to find life in and through me.

When I was old enough to get a job as a teenager, I did. When I graduated high school, I did the “next” thing, went to college and got two degrees so I could support myself if needed and help support a family in the future. For the most part I was a good girl (except for those times I wasn’t.) A rule-following, realist – because life is, well, real.

Not until five years ago when I quit my corporate job to come home to our farm and be more present in my children’s lives, help more in the day-to-day of farm life and pursue a passion for photography, did I start to realize I had dreams that could also possibly become reality. And they have. But I’m not done dreaming…or doing.

Why do we tend to think dreams are only for dreaming? People who do big things often dreamed big dreams first.

Maybe its just me, but I realize more and more that I’m actually the one holding myself back from doing the things I know I want to or feel like God is calling me to – because I say I can’t. Nobody else is telling me that. Only the face staring back in the mirror. The same face I’ve stared at, cried with, laughed with, been content with, and been anything but content with.

I say I’m not capable.

I say I can’t learn.

I say somebody else is already doing it better.

I say I’m not worthy.

I say I’m not important enough.

If you have said or are saying the same to the face you see in the mirror…I’m now saying this to us both:

We are capable.

The world actually does need what we have to say and do, because nobody else can say or do it the same.

We are worthy and we are important. We wouldn’t have been given breath and lungs and the desire to dream if God hadn’t deemed us or our story worth sharing.

You and I were made for more than just a life wished for – we were made for a life lived.

And lived into with all we have to give. But just like the animals and crops on this farm – what doesn’t get fed will starve. The same applies to our dreams. If we feed them truth and effort, we give them life and the harvest will come in its own time and its own sometimes beautiful, sometimes messy way. But it will come.

We were made for so much more than we think and we can be so much more than we tell ourselves we can. But getting to the finish line will never happen without taking the first step. And yes, that first step can be the hardest to take. But just like that new, wet calf I watch with it’s knees buckled and shaking, once it gets up and drinks, the next steps come easier and within moments it’s off and running. So can we all be.