“I feel like my heart is on hold.” The words tumbled from the mouth of my friend, sad and deflated.

I understand the feeling. It wasn’t so long ago that I felt the same way. For years I tried to fuse my heart for writing with my heart for marriage and family but it never seemed to work. I could never get past my guilt, my doubts, my worries, my fears.

I’ve written about this before. Perhaps I’ll write about it a thousand times more, as I relay time and again how God stepped in and rescued me from my own limitations. How he blew the lid off my glass jar of dreams and showed me that I could be all three. That I needed to be all three. That I had to be all three in order to be healthy and whole.

My friend spoke these words a year ago but her heart has been at war for quite some time.

And this holding pattern, it’s killing her. It’s stealing her heart, her life.

When we deny our hearts the chance to thrive, each day can feel like a starving, like a gasping for breath. I know this feeling, this tiny death, this daily wasting away.

Last Sunday, I received the following text from my friend:

I need to talk to you! I need to talk to you! Everything’s good! You’ll think everything’s really, really good but you need to call me! Soon! Today! This afternoon if that’s ok!

I called my friend and as we started to talk I realized that something was different. Something had changed inside her. In her voice, I could hear it: Life! And I knew that God had blown the lid on her jar of dreams just like he did mine.

As my friend choked on happy tears, I listened, my own heart filling to the brim with my love for her, with excitement for what this means.

Because I know what this means. I know what it’s like to have God call you, and your heart, and your dreams by name, to have him give you hope and a purpose. He did this for me when he affirmed my calling to be a wife, and mom, and a writer. And now He was doing this for my friend, showing her how she could nurture both a passion for her family and a passion for other things, important things that make her heart sing.

“I’m a dreamer,” she said. “And my kids have never seen me as a dreamer. They don’t know this part of me because I’ve buried it for so long. They need to know the real me, and I’m the only one who can show them.”

“You’re right,” I said.  “What God is calling you to won’t be easy. You’ll have moments and days when I feels impossible, when you’ll think you’re crazy, when you’ll want to give up. But God will give you exactly what you need to do this. God will never give you a dream and purpose in your heart without giving you a way to accomplish it.”

As these words left my mouth I knew that this conversation was as much for me, as it was for my friend. I needed to hear these words too. I needed to trust them, believe them, let them settle in my heart as truth.

Because this life, it’s filled with impossible things. Things that make our callings, our dreams seem futile, a joke.

How does a mother write in the midst of a husband, and homeschooling, and house work, and a two-year-old who still can’t sleep through the night?

How does an elderly couple give birth to a nation? A boy kill a giant? A dead man rise from the grave?  

How do you take the unseen dreams of your heart and reconcile them with the all you can see in this world? The barren, the giants, the buried?

“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26 (NIV)

With God the barren are multiplied.

With God the giants are slain.

With God the buried are brought back to life.

With God the mama writes.

Sweet friends, these aren’t just Hallmark words. These words are God’s words. These words are truth.

Whatever seems impossible in your life today, whether it’s a dream that lays uncovered, buried deep in your heart or a vision, a purpose from God that you’ve been called to, don’t keep your heart on hold.  Don’t give in to that which is seen.

Put your heart, your jar of dreams, your calling, in the hands of the King and believe in things unseen.