Dreams

Are dreams meant to be realized or shelf-ized?

I've just been thinking about this alot recently. Right now I have alot of commitments to fulfill, bills to pay off, and growing to do, but what is it about my dreams that feel unreachable?

I don't feel like God made me to be content with a typical life. As a matter of fact, I KNOW He didn't! I just often have troubles with figuring out where I'm going. I'm at a point in my life where 90% of my friends are married or engaged. If I think about it too much, I just get bogged down in self pity. Don't get me wrong, most of them I'm really, really happy for! Best friends of mine who are good, solid, smart, educated ladies who have found outstanding, respectable men to share their lives with. A few of these friends have found that one man who won't look down on them because they're a woman, but at the same time have the sense and the decency and the understanding of their wives/fiancees to know when they need to step in and protect.

Where are those men? Those who aren't threatened by an educated woman's sense of self, strength, inner Amazonian-like women warriors-in-the-Spirit.
Yet also where are those women? Women who want and will allow, even encourage the man to step up and take his place in the family, in society? Women who want to stand by that amazing man in ministry, whatever and wherever it may be, who want to have children and raise families to continue to fight for God's causes in a corrupt world?

Where are the women like me?

I was just told the other day by a co-worker, albeit not the brightest bulb on the block, that she felt the need to 'dumb herself down' to make friends and be liked by people.
What???????
Since when is it o.k. for any female to degrade themselves to a point where, no matter what their real hair color, all anyone sees is a dumb blondes? Since when is it o.k. for men to treat us like a simple, helpless piece of meat meant to be chewed up and spit out???

But maybe I'm going too far. I'm just so tired and upset of living in a world without God. A nation that perpetuates the belief that 'the American dream' is the ideal. I don't think it is.

A life of service to our Lord and to each other should be the norm, the ideal. What has happened to the dreamers??? Where has everyone gone who believed in something more than a big house in the suburbs with a dog and three kids? I believe in one of my previous posts I did mention something about wanting that. Not anymore. I want the things of God. I want to travel and see the world through His eyes. I want to feel His heartbeat for the return of His people to Him. I want to be a woman of God not taken for granted, yet also treated with respect for my experience and expertise in work and life.

You know, dreams are funny things, how they change, evolve, and sometimes disappear. I grew up wanting to be a ballerina, a firefighter, a policewoman, a teacher, a musician, a mom, a doctor... all at once! haha....
Those things are still a fond recollection in the fog of my past, but now I have grown to realize that it's not humanly possible to do all of that together. My dreams of a family, travel, ministry, pets; they've all evolved.
But my dreams of adventure have never died. I have been created for an amazing adventure - I just don't know what it is yet. I want more than this world has to offer. I am learning to wait more quietly, mature in a more focused manner, but still dream bigger. It's hard, it's scary, but I have a feeling that in the end, it will all be worth it.