A Houseful of Dreams

At breakfast this morning, I started singing a random line to the kids:

“I’ve got one silver sovereign in my pocket and a house full of dreams.”

Ella, giving me the side-eye eleven-year-old girls much smarter than their dad often do:

“It’s not a house full of dreams. It’s a hatful of dreams.”

It’s from the movie Wonka — a recent Willy Wonka remake. We haven’t seen it in quite a while. I saw it in theaters months ago, so I have no idea why the melody hopped into my head — however wrong it was.

Our conversation continued.

Me: “Well, you may be right. However, we have a housefull of dreams. You, and Jude, and Zeke, and Momma, and me — full of dreams and wonder and things yet to be. So maybe I like my version better.”

Erin read a book recently about a lady living a life full of hardships. Meaning, living with incurable cancer-type hardships.

She asked her pastor, “How am I supposed to live with this diagnosis?”

His answer was simple and quite profound. He said:

“I don’t know. But don’t skip to the end.”

And so we don’t.

We don’t wish this season away.

We still live. And travel. And Erin still makes Zeke dance with her in the kitchen before Belles and Beaus.

In fact, we are viewing this as a season to “do all the things” — to book the trips, the concerts, the tickets. To embrace this season with fervor instead of hesitation.

Everything that used to make us feel busy is now making us feel alive.

I’m not sure that’s how you’re exactly supposed to handle a season of cancer and doctors and treatments and uncertainty. They also don’t hand you a playbook for these things. So instead of skipping to the end — whenever that may be — we come alive in the present.

Ella wrote this at church over the weekend.

Probably not understanding the profound depth of it.

And maybe all of our understandings get in the way of our faith anyways.

“God gave me a blank white canvas and I feel like He is telling me to paint the picture.

I think that means that I rely on Him so much that He just puts on a show for my life —

but He is telling me to tell Him what I want my life to be about and He can make that happen.”

Rely and watch Him put on a show.

That’s what we are choosing to do.

And He is.

In the flowers, and the food, and the texts, and the check-ins, the cold-capping, and the prayers, and on and on and on and on…

He is putting on a show.