dreams

Does This Make Me Look Engaged?

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 2 Comments
Engaged on Christmas Day 2023

The first time he asked me to be his girl, I threw up a hand in disgust and said “As if?!” That was 20+ years ago…

Clint and I didn’t quite grow up together, but we went to the same church as teenagers. I remember wanting a boyfriend but feeling largely unseen by all the boys I was interested in. My best friend and I would bemoan this issue screaming out in the safety and privacy of my car on youth nights.

On one of those nights, Clint approached me in the parking lot and asked me to date him. It went a little something like this:

Clint: I’m sure you know I’m interested in you. I just haven’t made my mind up yet if I want to ask you…or your sister.

Me: Whatever?! Good luck with that! (walks away laughing in disgust)

Because of that one bad approach and my response to it, Clint never tried again. I lumped him in with all the other things wrong with narrow-minded teen boys and never saw the courage it took for him to try in the first place. In reality, Clint was always seeing more quality in me than I saw in him.

Fast forward 10+ years and I had moved away, but he stayed right in Goldsboro and in the same church. Sometimes he thought about me and wondered where I was. Sometimes I thought of him and wondered the same. To him, I was the girl that got away. To me, he was the boy that never changed.

But life did change him. It changed us both.  He got married and had kids. I had multiple failed relationships. He stayed faithful to his church and his family. I traveled the world trying to find my own happy ending.

Marriage and becoming a father mellowed Clint out. He couldn’t be focused on himself or all his solo interests. When his marriage ended, he was heartbroken. He never wanted to be alone and never planned for his relationship to fail; he was all in. She wasn’t. It was a dark time in his life, and it took a long time for him to believe in love again.

Though I was never married, I came close a couple of times. Something was always missing. I knew I had to agree with my future husband on the important foundational issues like faith and finances, but I wasn’t. So I remained frustrated in all my relationships and frustrated single when I was out of them.

In all of this, I cried out to God for my person. “Where is he, God? I can’t do this (life) without him much longer!” Throughout my life, as I thought of the unknown man I would marry, I prayed for God’s protection over him and that God would guard his heart and body and keep it for me. I wrote about him too in poems that are just coming true now. Though I shook my fist at God for His timing, I ultimately trusted Him to take care of my man and be able to speak to him on my behalf.

2023 came and I was crying myself to work every day just so filled with loneliness. I was happy in my own skin but unhappy in relationships. I had tried everything and failed; I didn’t know how to move forward. My constant prayer during that season was “how much longer? How much longer, Lord?!”

On April Fool’s Day, I got a message on Facebook. It was from Clint. He said he wanted to reach out and reconnect as friends. Burned by men and trusting nothing online anymore, I said yes. At least this was a real person I knew, I thought, not all the fake catfishers I’d been recently burned by. “A friendship is harmless,” I told myself.

We talked non-stop for the next several days. I felt my heart thaw and begin to hope again. Maybe…maybe this could be love? Clint felt it too. Although he asked for friendship, he felt God urging him to ask for more. So he pursued me, asked me to be his girlfriend, and on April 5th, we started a relationship.

Right from the start, things were different. Clint treated me like an equal partner in everything. I felt peace just being with him. He felt peace in my presence too. We were attracted to each other and patient with our passion. We respected each other and truly wanted to make each other happy. While we were two very different people, we found a safety and partnership in each other that made our individual lives better. I found comfort in his 30+ year commitment to our childhood church. I found a safe place to share my full Pentecostal faith; a man who not only understood but shared my beliefs. It was the missing piece I had longed for in all my past relationships. My heart finally found its home–in the man I had written off in my childhood.

December 10th, a darkness happened. We lost my father. I mourned all that dad wouldn’t be able to see in my life. On Christmas, Clint and his daughter, Anna, came. Anna decorated the tree with our family’s sentimental ornaments and ribbons from dad’s memorial flowers. Christmas Day, we opened presents and Anna painted my nails. She made me look good for a picture of Clint and I by the tree, but it was all a set up. Instead of a picture, she was filming. Clint knelt to one knee in front of the tree and in front of my mom and Anna, and he asked me to marry him. I was in shock but didn’t have to think about it. I knew my answer was yes.

Later, I found out that Clint had asked my dad’s permission to marry me in July. Dad talked to him and told him “welcome to the family”. Anna and my bestie, Andrea, had helped him pick out the ring. Suddenly my sadness over dad’s passing was overcome by joy. God found a way to include my father in our marriage by guiding Clint to talk to him earlier about it.

Celebrating our engagement

Looking back on all this now after a year of dating and engagement, I think God’s timing was perfect. He could have put us together when we were younger when our differences would have driven us apart. He could have put us together partway down the road when our brokenness needed each other but our hearts weren’t open. Instead, God brought us together after failed relationships taught us to be flexible and open to love.

If God had done it any earlier, a lot would be different. As it is, we get to start off life as a family, and I get a daughter who loves to read as much as I do.

Neither Clint nor I are perfect people. We view our relationship as a lifetime commitment, and we stay committed to working through our difficult times as partners. That is what marriage is: it is a living reminder of the partnership God offers us through His Son, Jesus Christ. It’s a continual lifestyle of compromise, integrity, and trust.

I will share more about our journey and the wedding that has been years in the making here on this blog. Subscribe to catch all the news as it comes out!

The Unfiltered Advice I Wish I Could Tell The Younger Me

/ Rebecca J. Whitman

Advice about boys

That guy you are so focused on, the one you think hung the moon and stars, he didn’t. In fact, he will pull you away from the actual one who hung the moon and stars if you are not careful.

You are not a trashy person. Stop dressing like one. And stop giving the boys whatever they ask for. If you are not worth waiting for, they are not worth having as king of your castle. Don’t expect a Prince Charming out of an ugly toad no matter how much you kiss him.

Advice about dreams

So you want to be something that seems impossible, good! You are in good company with a lot of giants who changed the world. Know it isn’t easy to do that kind of work. Find someone who is doing what you want to do and doing it successfully–they aren’t broke or spending frivolously or being dishonest–and get them to mentor you.

Hold on and don’t give up! You have a God-sized dream which means it is one you can’t do without Him. Get serious about Jesus and get committed in your time spent building that relationship.

Advice about friends

Good friends are a lifeblood; bad friends corrupt even the little good you have. Friendship is an investment of time and resources. You don’t get to the good, life-long relationships without taking those sacrifices along the way. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life alone, get choosey about who you spend time with.

Don’t be afraid to say “no” to people. In fact, start now before you have a chronic habit of over committing yourself. If they are really your friends, they will understand. If they get mad, they probably weren’t your friends to begin with. Hold all those types of people loosely because they aren’t supposed to stay in your life forever.

The ones who are good life-long friends are the ones who support and encourage your dreams and aren’t afraid to challenge you when you get off the path in your goals or character. Make whatever sacrifices you need to make in your time and schedule to keep those people in your life. When you are old, your house will never lack for love or laughter because you made the effort to build relationships where they mattered.

How to Hold A Dream That Hasn’t Happened Yet

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 3 Comments

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. 

Proverbs 13:12

If you have been a long-term reader of this blog, you may remember a 2019 post about the dream of my son. In that post, I shared the very real hope of motherhood though I was neither a wife nor a mother.

I wish I could tell you that in two years everything changed…that I found my husband and we did, indeed, have that son. But that hasn’t happened for me yet.

In my thirties, I felt all the ticks of my biological clock. I was the only aunt of my two-now-three neices and nephew. I thought of all my happy childhood memories with cousins and felt the burden to provide them. I didn’t have the resources to adopt; all I could give them were fur cousins. I resolved to be the best Auntie I could be as I waited–somewhat grumpily–to be a mother.

The weight of that motherhood burden was so heavy that I used to periodically check in with my neices and ask how they felt about not having cousins. At first, it bothered them. Over time, they became thankful and didn’t care; they were happy to have Auntie Becca all to themselves. I played with them. I listened to them. I encouraged their dreams. When they grew older, they protected that investment and wouldn’t let anyone call themselves an “aunt” in their lives but me.

There have been moments when I have felt nothing but bitterness and rage over my lost dreams. How could God give me such a vivid dream if it is never to come to pass? Was it even God at all? Does He even exist/care/see me?

I have been through more than my fair share of negative spirals over this. Nothing hurts quite like having a dream deferred. Then God broke through with a different perspective:

Stop seeing what you lack, and start seeing what you have.

Be loving to those I bring you who are unloved.

Be motherly to those who don’t have a good experience with their mother.

Be a good steward to what I have given you, and I will give you infinitely more.

God

Within me there is a tidal wave of love for my husband and children, but I hold back the tide for when they arrive. I have learned to hold the dream of them loosely in my heart, and I don’t live my days with my head on swivel trying to find them.

I let God into my everyday life.

Now I live choosing daily to focus on Him and what I do have not what I don’t. Sometimes that takes playing the same worship song over and over till I get the anthem that God loves me and that really is enough. Other days, it is joyous adventure led by His Hand. Either way, it is a better life than the life before focused on tragedy and lack.

Patience is not a virtue I wear well; I have to fight for it.

I have to fight to have it at all, really. Time itself is a reminder of patience. Having just 24 hours in a day when you need 28 makes you realize not everything happens as quickly as you may want it to. I can struggle and work hard and give myself barely a minute to eat of sleep while I try to get everything done, or I can accept my limitations, do my best, and trust God with the rest. Life always turns out better with option 2.

God’s waiting room is not a punishment; it is how He works. It took 15 years for David to go from the anointing to becoming King. It took 25 years for Abraham to go from the promise of fathering nations to hearing that first cry of Issac.

God guides us one step at a time expecting us to do the best we can, and what happens next hinges on the faithfulness to the step–the opportunity–he has for us right now.

Pastor Andrew Price, The Bridge Church, Mount Olive, NC

There are things I have to do right now to be a good steward of all my resources and a prepared home for the blessings I believe God has in my future. I take that responsibility seriously. I guard my investments of time, money, and talent diligently. Sometimes that means I have to say “no”–even to people counting on me to say “yes”.

Trusting God is not passive.

I’ve come to believe that my life is no longer about achieving a certain goal in my personal life or career. I think, more than anything, it is about living life with Christ, being a good steward of all He gives me, and finding joy in the journey.

I don’t want to just store up treasures for some future glory; I want to find treasure in my everyday life and enjoy it too.

The treasure looks like many different things:

  • It is that friend that has been encouraging me for years.
  • It is the money slipped into my hand at Christmas to protect my pride and honor my commitments.
  • It is the play put on with excellence at my local theater that filled my heart with pride and artistic comfort.
  • It is the moment spent enjoying a good meal with loved ones.
  • It is sitting unplugged from electronics and crocheting or knitting something new to wear.
  • It is meeting new people and hearing their stories.
  • It is watching the birds come to my window and eat the treats left for them.

All these moments and thousands more are what I look for and treasure. They are reminders of a loving God and assurance that I am headed in the right direction. God has so much more in store than I can plan for today.

Quote and graphic from Holly Furtick, Elevation Church

I keep hope alive and don’t listen to naysayers.

There are a lot of reasons why a woman of my age should give up on the dream of motherhood. In terms of childbirth, I became geriatric twenty years ago and having a child is a health risk.

Yet, I dream on. If it is truly God’s will for me, He will open doors no man can shut, and I will have a baby in my arms to laugh and rejoice with. If it is not God’s will, I have nothing to lose from living a life of love and service now.

I choose to listen to hope dealers like Pastors Steven and Holly Furtick from Elevation Church, Pastor DJ Coles from The 4 Day Movement, and Pastor Andrew Price from The Bridge Church.

Hope is not gone, friends. As long as you are breathing, there is still room for your circumstances to change. Focus on what you have and what you can contribute to, and let God take care of the rest. Life is too short for anything less.

So how do you hold a dream?

You hold it loosely and trust the Author to fulfill it or rewrite it as necessary along your life’s journey.

Green Acorn: A Prayer

/ Rebecca J. Whitman

We certainly associate Spring with growth, but Autumn is the start. We have to shed our leaves and let things die for them to grow anew.

Millie, editor of Sylvia magazine
Reading by author, Rebecca Whitman

What will you start in me today, Lord?

What gentle bud will cocoon its life and wait for Spring? What leaves will shed and rot to feed the root of this dream? What branches will You prune from me because they bare no fruit? Will it be a wandering branch of thought or a whole arm out of touch with the mission?

I wait and listen…but I’m a little scared too.

It’s been a fear unsettled since I returned here, yet I want You to unearth it. Uproot it like the weed it is and water me with the Miracle-Gro of Your presence. I feel like I can’t hide away enough in You. Isn’t that part of the evidence here of transformation?

I give you…everything.

I surrender everything I have because I know it is a gift from You–a resource given to use not hoard. I know you will take care of me and get resources to me if you know you can get them through me.

I work through my waiting.

I pursue greater trust in You. I write down my dreams, and I’m not afraid to dream big with You! I make plain the steps to fulfill what I can, but, ultimately, it all falls apart without Your hand.

I have looked up at the sky through a world full of acorns.

I have seen the light through the leaves and let them fall on me. I have let brown acorns root and take residence where they should not have been, while the good green ones fell away from me. Why was my soil not good enough for their seed? Why did some other woman grab them with her earth, become their lover–their mother of children?

My ground, though aged and weak, has rested. The once stripped soil is fertile ground once more. I wait–with thanksgiving and expectation–for tomorrow’s planting and harvest. I thank You, Lord, for the green acorn You have chosen and are preparing for me today.

How To Navigate Singleness

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 3 Comments

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was growing up, I was a cute little blonde with blue eyes and curly hair and dimples. I had a cheery personality and everyone liked me–I had no problem making friends–but I was invisible to the boys. As I got older and into my dating years, I felt really self-conscious when I didn’t have a date. What was wrong with me? Why didn’t anyone ask me out? 

Being invisible became a real problem for my self-esteem. I compared myself to other girls and automatically assumed everyone else was better than me. I hated myself because I wasn’t the girl every guy wanted to get with. I hated other women because they were the girls every guy wanted to get with. In judging others, I perpetuated a lie that I was not good enough to be loved exactly as I am for who I am without any changes. The more I believed the lie, the more I trapped myself in hatred of myself and other women. The more trapped I was, the farther I fell from ever really seeing the truth. I WAS worthy of love…a truly awe-inspiring love story.

A Truly Awe-Inspiring Love Story

I’ve had a rough journey when it comes to love. I’ve been putting my heart out there and trying to trust guys for years, but every relationship or attempt at one leaves me burned.

I told myself that when I got to a certain goal or deadline, I would get back out there and try again. That moment came and went, though, and I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t sure I would ever trust again. Maybe I’ll just stay single, I thought. I started thinking about building a family through adoption, and I started making plans for a house of my own. Maybe a truly awe-inspiring love story is just not in the cards for me.

Take Time To Love Yourself

Being single can be the most miserable place to be–especially if you are relationship-oriented like me. The challenge, in this time is to keep telling myself it’s all going to be okay even when I don’t really know it is.

I try to fill my time with things for myself that I hadn’t been able to pursue before. For example, I was able to focus and finish my Master’s degree after a breakup. I have also spent the alone time to focus on ignored health needs and learn new skills.

It’s important to do healthy things that make your heart feel better too. Now is the time to read a mystery instead of a romance, watch The Crown on Netflix, finish a project, go somewhere new, and spend more time with quality friends.

“Personal development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time and energy needed to develop yourself.”

―Denis Waitley

Final Thoughts

I am not an expert on relationships. I am still figuring this out for myself too. But I know this much: you don’t have to be a perfect person to be loved, and just because your love life is a mess now, doesn’t mean it will be that way forever.

Give yourself some room to focus on you and get healthy.

Love will come when it is right and when your heart is healed and ready for it. When it does, be smarter from your past mistakes; don’t hold on to bad fish for years hoping they will get their lives together and stop stinking.

Dare to believe you are worth a love that will go the distance for you, and you just might be one of the lucky ones that finds it.

The Dream of My Son

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 10 Comments

You would love my son.
When he was young, his black hair curled around his ears and bounced when he ran outside to play. He had long eyelashes that feathered his light skin like angel wings when he slept.
It was hard for my son to sit still–he was like his father in that. He was always on a mission to build the next fort, fight the next enemy raid, save the next princess, or build the next rocket to Mars. When his imaginary world wasn’t fully booking his time, he was in the garden or kitchen or studio helping me. He was always bringing me flowers or little drawings to make me smile. He was not the kind of son that troubles his parents; he was the one that lived to make them proud. My son’s imaginative and compassionate heart surpassed my wildest dreams for him.
You would have loved my son…if he were here yet.
Sometimes we dream about the future and what is yet to be. That’s the way my son came to me. I knew his name and his character long before I met the man that would be my husband. Though I have never held my son in my arms, I feel the joy and pain of his memory as if it had really happened.
I am not a mother.
Yet the dream of my son rests heavy on my heart denying the truth of that statement.
I am not a mother…yet.
This world is full of injustices:
One woman has an unwanted pregnancy while another tries for years to have one. One woman longs for a godly husband while another cheats on the good one she has. One child wants for nothing while another struggles to find a safe, happy home. One parent sacrifices everything to care for her child while another ignores hers to pursue her own selfish desires. Children are forced to act like adults in a godless world devoid of a moral compass.
All this angers me. All this grieves the heart of God too.
I am not old and yet, at my age, most of my peers are married with children having children now. If I think about it too much, I am easily angered by the fact that I am not there yet.
Why, oh God, do you give me the vision of a happy life, married, and my son…why my son!…when every year my body ages towards infertility or worse!
You may have said something similar to God yourself. God likes to remind me of Sarah every time I do.
Um, you know I made a dream like this come true for a woman in her 80s, right?
Oh Lord, please don’t wait that long!
But that’s the point: WAIT!
When the vision hasn’t happened, prepare your heart and life as if it were. That’s what it means to wait. Get ready in every way possible. If you can save money towards your vision, save. If you can get healthier, get healthy. Some complications and health risks in pregnancy can be avoided by losing weight and getting healthier before you are even trying to get pregnant. You’ll be thankful you put in the effort too when you try to chase around a toddler in your 80s…I hope that isn’t literal for any of us. 😉
During this time in our lives when we don’t really understand what God is doing or why we don’t have the hopes and dreams we planned to at this time, it is easy to start comparing ourselves to others and despairing at our lack. I like what a local friend and pastor said about this:
When you compare yourself to others, you rob yourself of what God is trying to do in your life. –Ryan Barbato
It is very easy to get caught up in comparisons and judgments of others, but we cannot change the world, we can only change ourselves. Furthermore, judging others fills us with resentment and anger about people and situations we don’t know all the facts about. God is writing their stories in the same way that he is writing ours, and he can make lemonade out of our lemons better than we can.
Maybe we need to start asking God to help us judge others from His perspective through eyes of forgiveness and love instead of holding on to our sour lemons.

What Home Sweet Home Looks Like To Me

/ Rebecca J. Whitman / 16 Comments

A house is made of walls and beams; a home is made of love and dreams. –Anonymous

I still remember my earliest dream. I lived in a castle and a winged unicorn flew to my window and carried me away into the clouds. I explored the world in safety on the back of my alicorn. The colors and details were so vivid that when I woke up, I wrote them all down. It became the first book I published. I was seven.

It’s been a while, but I never did get the castle window or the alicorn of my dreams. I think it is safe to say my life is better off without it anyway. But what about the more realistic dreams I’ve had that would make life better?

We all have that list. You know the one. It’s the one that tells you to get a better job, lose weight, buy a house already and stop paying rent, land a ring from that man before you’re forty, have some kids before your ovaries turn into raisins, etc. That list. It is a never-ending fault finder, yet we judge our lives by what it says.

Over sixty years ago, two kids who knew very little about lists fell in love. They were both working class farm kids from the plains of the Midwest. The young man saw the young pretty girl at a church social, but he soon discovered she lived far away from him. That didn’t stop him from pursuing her. Determined to win her, he wore out seven cars driving to see her before they finally were wed.

Three kids, seven grandkids, and sixty years later, there were hundreds of photos proving they lived happily ever after. As one of the seven, I was there to witness and take a lot of them. Yet my favorite is the one taken at the beginning of it all.

They are just home from their honeymoon and standing beside the row of trees they planted on their homestead. Their arms are wrapped around each other and their faces are spread widely with smiles. He stands tall with a puffed out chest, proud of the woman on his arm. She snuggles up tight to him and laughs, her face hidden in the shadow of his. The caption written in her handwriting says, “I caught my man.”

We should all be so deliriously happy.

They jumped into life together without counting costs or making lists. They had each other and Jesus. They were fearless.

Fearless doesn’t mean they didn’t see hard times. It doesn’t even mean they lived blissfully without fighting. But when they fought, when times got tough, they talked it out and prayed it out. The hard times strengthened them.

Their homestead wasn’t fancy, but it was the home of my dreams.

It was a home full of love, encouragement, and creativity. It was a home with too much activity for binge watching tv. It was a home where strangers felt welcome and family piled in to stay. Food stretched farther through generosity, and blankets made comfortable pallets on the floor.

It was a home that believed in the power of prayer. When fear crept in or tried to attack the family, it ignited their warrior prayer. Days and nights were filled with reading and talking about scripture; it wasn’t just words on a page to them.

If this is the dream, how do I get there?

If I want the deliriously happy home I remember, I have to start with myself.

I have to start being the change I seek.

If I want a home that is focused on the power of prayer, I need to pray more now. If I want to live generously, I need to give generously now. If I want to be more creative and less hooked to devices, I need to unplug more now. Eventually, I will find myself in the home of my dreams.

What can you start doing today to further your goals and your dreams?