What kind of encouragement inspires you to give your dream a chance when you feel you are #madeformore?
This weekend my encouragement came from my adorable 3-year-old.
We’d been waiting for just the right kind of snowfall to use our igloo-building tools to make an igloo. With the overnight snow storm and school canceled, Friday was the day to give her dream a chance!
The snow was moist, dense and a little melty. It packed beautifully in our Elsa-and-Anna adorned ice-block maker and trowel. We set to work.
Of course, I figured she’d just have the patience to make a snow brick wall, and I’d never actually have to figure out how to make a rounded top. But I forgot my little girl would stay out all day in the snow if she could.
Three bricklayers of our tiny semi-circle later and I was ready to call it quits.
Lexie, however, checked the label of the brick-maker that show a tiny diagram of two kids making an igloo with a dome top and tunnel doorway.
“Mommy, it needs a door. We need to make the top, still.”
“I don’t know how to make the top, Lexie. It just falls over.”
“You can do it. I know you can!”
Surprised and cheered on by her emphatic encouragement, I helped her build two more rows.
“Why don’t we just leave it like this and call it a snow fort, Lexie?”
“No, it needs a top like the picture, Mommy. You can do it, I know you can!”
Her encouragement spurred me on. I figured it wouldn’t work, but I had to try for her. I attempted to stack snow bricks into a dome top. They crumbled and fell. I put them back and padded the weak areas.
Minutes before dinnertime, even though we lost half the entrance, I finished the “dome”.
She crawled inside with a grin, then back out again and checked the label on the brick-maker.
“We have to finish it, Mommy. It’s not the same. It needs a door.”
Dang it.
Here I was quite proud of how she had pushed me further than I would have gone on her own. While I was fine with not reaching perfection, she is still driven by everything being just so.
“It’s time for supper now,” I said. “It takes lots of practice to make an igloo like the one on the box. This was our first time. It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
She assessed it and turned away. “Let’s make a new one — the right way.”
—
I thought about the exchange all evening.
Her persistence towards her desired end.
Her emphatic encouragement.
How much I valued those words in what I felt called to do.
I thought about it at the park the next day when she was determined to share every experience, prompting me to wedge my butt down the kiddo slide and throw myself down a fire station pole PAW Patrol style. “You can do it!, Mommy!”
Give your dream a chance
Hearing encouragement from someone who believes in us and our dream with simple faith lights us up over the smallest thing.
It helps you believe in yourself again.
It helps you see your vision when you feel stuck.
It makes you go farther than you’d go on your own.
It gives you a picture grander, more fun, more meaningful than you’d envision on your own.
From where can you receive encouragement towards your #madeformore dream this week? Welcome it from unexpected places. : )
How can YOU encourage someone towards their dream this week? Your expression of belief in them could be the spark that stops them from quitting this week.
You can do it!
