I had to throw out my goal list for 2015. We were only 3 days into the New Year when I did it.
 
It was a sad moment because my list contained some great ideas: people to connect with. Places I wanted to visit. What I hoped to accomplish this year - as a writer and leader, as a wife and mom, as a neighbor and friend.
 
And yet – throwing it in the trash can… is the best decision I’ve made this year.
 
Because – it was too small. 
 
You see, I went rifling back through some old journals in the first few days of the New Year (a regular routine) and I realized that the goals I had set were really just a set of things to be checked off a to-do list.
 
They weren’t that much bigger than what I had set out to accomplish in 2014. They were achievable with just a little more effort than what I exerted last year.
 
But, to know me… is to know that I don’t do very many things with only “a little effort.” It’s everything I can muster. I’ve always been that way. Call it a strength. Call it a flaw. I’m pretty passionate. And I go hard after whatever is before me.
 
But that list… it was so… mediocre. So risk-less. So attainable. So easily jotted down.
 
So, I scrapped it and picked up my pen again. And started writing. Dreaming Bigger. Letting go of what I could “do” on my own, and wandered into the realm of impossible. 
 
And after a few minutes I stopped.
Sat back.
And smiled.
Because what I had written was so much better.
 
 
And I believe it’s exactly where God wants me to be. 

I firmly believe that God desires us to live in the realm of “impossible for me” – because that’s where He likes to work. In those places where the dream is not just out of reach, but FAR from reach. When we live there, people will know that it was God acting in our lives, and not us working on our own strength.
 

But because it’s what draws us closer to Him. And closer. And closer still.
 
In those moments of being intimately close, I realize that my biggest dream – is just a glimpse of what He sees anyway.
 
I like it better this way.
 
When I’m running with God. When together we are chasing after a big goal. Facing a challenge. Overcoming an obstacle. Chasing a lion. Wait, what?!  (Last year I read the book “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” by Mark Batterson. I gave my recommendation earlier this week in another post. If you believe that God has more for you to do then to just exist and plod through your mundane days, then give it a read. I think you’ll like it.)  
 
So, I want to know – what are your goals for this year?
 
Are they really something that would be better described as a “to-do”? You know, the things you can actually do on your own. Or are they wild, audacious dreams that cause you to sweat a little (and others to shake their heads at your courage.)
 
Because that’s exactly where God wants us. 

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us” – Ephesians 3:20 (the Message)