This blog is in reaction to the blog Spiritual Popcorn by Paul Jarzembowski. It is my journey through the movies and how I am finding myself. So, check out http://www.spiritualpopcorn.blogspot.com/ first and read his thoughts on the movie Inception then check out my journey.
Inception.
"Dreams can indeed frighten us, especially if the person God created us to be is far from the illusion that we have created in reality."
Yikes!!! I'm pretty sure I'm kinda off course on this one. I am in the illusion that I'm a Youth Minister by nature and therefore that is what my job should be. Eep! Is it possible that what I think is doing God's work is really just a stepping stone to the real work? Have I taken refuge on this part of the journey thinking that it is the destination?
Dream Big our parents told us. You can do anything you put your mind to. Yes, Sarah you too can be President of the United States, my mom used to say to me. (A job you couldn't pay me enough to do) The only thing is no one really told me how to make my dreams happen. Sure I graduated from High School and received a Bachelor's Degree but what does that get now days? I had a job in my field for 12 months (hated every minute of it!) when I graduated and not since.
My dream at it's core though is to be a household name. I want everyone to know who I am. Now, fortunately I know not to go the Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton rout of infamy. But I am still trying to figure out why this is so important to me and even more to the point what I have to offer the world that make this of value and a reality.
I have been fortunate over the last year or more to be working on my Certification as a Life Coach and have worked with some great people to help make dream come true (or at least start to). I have been asked to speak to various Young Adult and Youth Ministries over the last couple of years (in fact I have a talk on Thursday night) and this has been exciting and invigorating. It is in these moments that I feel most authentic and alive. But when it comes to promoting myself to gain more opportunities for others to get to know me, I freeze. I have the most difficult time promoting myself and what I can do to help others.
This is part of the dream that frightens me. What if I promote myself to someone and they say no, laugh at me, or say "I just don't get it"? Eep! How much rejection could I take? I don't like being turned down. I would be a horrible telemarketer. Thank you God for giving me other options. But then again...What if people say yes. Then I have to come up with something good....no, great.What if I suck?What if I'm great? Holy crap it's a paradox. I just don't know what to do. I have a fear of failure and the more paralyzing fear of success. Yikes!!! Oh wait, maybe this is the "illusion" Paul was talking about in the above quote.
Is my fear of success an illusion? Something that someone put into the depths of my dreams. My fear of becoming more successful than my sister and then making her feel or look bad, like I unintentionally did when we were kids. I don't want to intentionally do that now. She used to say to me something like, "you just smile and everyone loves you." What a great compliment but I always felt that she was dissing herself at the same time. She called herself the black sheep of the family and I was the golden child. I didn't ask for that so I tried to do as little as possible to get by in life so that I didn't out shine her and make her feel bad. Nobody should be put into a position of feeling like shit about themselves or unworthy. I wanted her to feel good about herself and as cherished and loved as I felt. I'm sure that this inception on her part was as little thought out as the character of Cobb talking to his wife. Yet, here I am believing in the illusion of this unintentional inception.
Now that leaves me to question, am I leaving unintentional inceptions in others? I pray that they are based upon amazingly good feelings to do great things for our world.
