How do you dream big AND embrace today?

I was up for my two hour jaunt last night. It's a thing that, with this pregnancy, happens about once a week. I've come to embrace it and since, now, I'm no longer fighting nausea for those two hours, I am using it to reflect and pray. I am soaking up the quiet while simultaneously praying for sleep to come.

I am leading a class surrounding Emily P. Freeman's book, A Million Little Ways. It has truly been a blessing - to read it a second time and to move through it with a group of honest women. What I am struggling with, though - what I always struggle with - is the ability to dream big for the future while standing with my two feet planted firmly in my present reality.

Once, I took the test that is a part of Tom Rath's book, Strengths Finder. It told me that I am, among other things, futuristic. "You are the kind of person who loves to peer over the horizon. The future fascinates you. As if it were projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward into tomorrow...When the present proves too frustrating, and the people around you too pragmatic, you conjure up visions of the future..." This seemed like a really good explanation for my tendency to be discontent with the present. When I was just out of college, I came up with a new dream every month. What could I do for a living that would use some of my talents and interests that wouldn't be the same job every.single.day? The things I came up with were endless - and most of them silly, but I would dive headlong into these possibilities because I was so sick and tired of my reality.

They never came to fruition because, you know, I do live in the real world with real limitations...and a lot of them were silly. I'd wind up frustrated with myself, with God, and with my circumstances. Then I realized that discontentment was a deep rooted sin in my life, and it needed to be addressed. So, part of that solution was to stop dreaming and to live entirely in the present. This also doesn't work because it requires me to tuck away a legitimate part of who God created me to be...a dreamer. I have continued to hop on one side of the time line or the other for nearly ten years, but there has to be a better way.

Do you struggle with this, too? How do you dream big, expectant dreams while simultaneously embracing and enjoying your present reality? Seriously - a sister needs some help!