Hello, I am Rebecca Jackson, self-proclaimed as, The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer. If you read “Who is The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer? Part One” or “Who is The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer? Part Two” then you already know that I gave myself this title when I decided to relaunch this blog after a brief hiatus from blogging shortly after I first began this experiment as a virtual diary of sorts and to attempt to increase the frequency of my writing as a hobby overall. I am in the middle of my 35th year on this planet (as of the writing of this post) and I am the mother of four very busy young ladies, ranging from 16 down to 3. This is “Post Three” of a three-part blog series that I will be posting across the next few weeks, to introduce myself and my Dazzling Domestic Dreamer lifestyle and mentality. In “Part One” I explained how my journey started and where the Domestic came from in “The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer” and in “Part Two” I explained how my journey continued and where the Dazzling came from in “The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer” title. Today we will tackle the Dreamer part of me and my title. We are starting right where we left off in “Part Two” and also where I am currently at, in the middle of my story, or God’s story as I must properly credit. So let’s jump in where we left off, at the end of Part Two of “Who is The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer?”
First, let’s start with the definition of the word dreamer. Like the others, I pulled this definition from Google and Webster’s Dictionary definitions and compiled the two together to cover the basics of what I think of when my mind goes to the word Dreamer…
I explained in “Part One” how I jumped into “adulting” head first almost immediately after I graduated from high school, and bypassed my personal dreams to begin a domestic life with the man that is now my husband. I became a stay at home mom after working fulltime for eight years before my third daughter was born. In “Part Two” I explained that I love details, and sparkle, and glamour, and style and well thought out “extras”. I also discussed how there were some seasons that I struggled more than others to stay in tune with my Dazzling side, but I also briefly shared some of the methods I used to find my “Dazzle” and get it back in full force, where I feel like I am currently at. Truth be told, the dreamer in me is a little co-dependent on the dazzling part of me. If I am lacking in the luster department, the dreamer in me begins to drown in the stresses of day to day life. But God always seems to breathe life into me again just before my dreamer gets snuffed out every time. God has a plan for me, and if I need a little shock treatment to my soul every now and then to reignite the dreams He planted in my heart, then there is no better surgeon I’d like to administer it then Him.
For He Knows the Plans He Has for You Daughter…
Since I first learned to read and write, I have always loved books. I would read for hours and get lost in fantasy lands and become part of the communities in my head of the characters in the stories I read. I literally used to get punished for reading because I would sneak my books in my lap at the dinner table, skirt my chores or procrastinate on them so I could “finish this chapter” and then sneak into another when I thought my mother wouldn’t notice. I also, many nights, was the stereotypical kid under their sheets with a flashlight and a book instead of sleeping. I loved to read and still do, though I don’t find it as easy to find the time these days, I still make a point of taking in a few new reads a year nonetheless. I have also had a very active imagination, writing poems, song lyrics, short stories, picture books and even one attempt at a screenplay in high school before I got distracted by boys. I am and always have been a big fan of words and ideas. What many would call, a dreamer…
I believe God plants a series of dream seeds inside our heart when He knits each one of us together, and I believe that He hopes and prays for us that we nourish those dream seeds well to ensure we live our full potential for God’s will in our lives. Just as those people with children hope and pray to be able to aid in doing so for their children’s hopes and dreams aligned with their parental will, our Father God hopes and prays for our dreams aligned with His will. My first memorized and favorite bible verse has always played a hand in that belief.
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11 New International Version (NIV)
I believe He puts a little bit of dreamer in all of us, even the most type A, organized, structured people, have a little dreamer deep down inside of their soul. If you are willing to take a step, (or in some cases, a big old leap) in the direction of those dreams you just may be so incredibly surprised and blessed by the result of that faith step. In my case, I believe my seeds are many, God planted a whole vegetable garden of dreams in my heart and writing has always been one of the biggest of those dreams.
The Who Behind Every Story
I love to read the acknowledgments and author bios in books because I have always been equally as interested in the people creating the talented work I have enjoyed through the years. Thier personal journey, their experience and the people in their lives who have impacted and supported their dreams to become published authors. I want to read it all. It motivates me, it encourages me, and it reminds me that they are the fruits of their willingness to take a step in faith in the direction of their dreams. There are different real-life people and a story of triumph(s) behind every book cover in the bookstores, virtual and brick and mortar. Those stories are a result of countless more stories that don’t fill the pages and I can’t help but dream about that too. (Lol I told you I was a dreamer!)
More than wanting to know all of those many stories that have had to occur to put so many of my favorite books and many more into print, I want to get to the place in my own dreams where I am writing a bio for a book jacket and worrying about an author photo. I want to have the chance to write my acknowledgment pages and have them bound at the beginning of my very own published novel(s). I dream of it and have since I was just a little girl and that was the motivation behind choosing blogging to begin my publishing journey. This is where the Dreamer in my title came from. I have always been a dreamer and I plan to never stop dreaming so I firmly believe God planted this as the third word in my title intentionally. As I explained in Part One of this series when I named my blog after my fourth daughter joined our family, and I was ready to begin tackling this leg of my journey, God planted three words in my head and they immediately felt right, Dazzling, Domestic, and my favorite being the Dreamer.
Dreamer Fueled, God Approved
Not only have I always been a dreamer, but I have always been drawn to dreamcatchers. From a young age I found them, beautiful and pulled in by the intracicies and details each one includes. Even before I had any understanding of their actual background, I seemed to always spot them and I was still a young girl when I first was given one as a gift that wound up hung by my bedpost.
(Quick sidebar, the origin of the dreamcatcher is that at a certain time in Anishnabe history the people were suffering from frequent bad dreams that stumped the elders and “Medicine People” so the elders began making and distributing “dreamcatchers” as they came to be called, to entangle the bad dreams, or dreams and thoughts with malicious or unhelpful intent, keeping them from entering your head and only allowing good dreams to pass. Not entirely meant to prevent nightmares, because through some nightmares, lessons or revelations can come, but eliminating the pointless negativity from getting in your head while you sleep. They are intended to be hung by the bedpost so that only the good dreams pass through the hole in the center and travel down the feathers into your dreams.)
After learning the background and origin of dreamcatchers I found it an interesting analogy to God our father. While we sleep, (and are awake) God is protecting us, in our slumber He protects our dreams and only allows through productive dreams that will further his mission for our life and bring glory to Him. In doing so He is protecting us from Satan’s attacks, by way of fear-inducing, non-productive, negative and malicious thoughts and dreams. Though like in the origin of the dreamcatcher, nightmares can be neccessary in our dream state (or real life) to teach us things or help us come to revelations, but He is in our corner, at our bedpost, waging war with Satan on our behalf every single moment. Our tears are not wasted in those nightmares, instead, He counts them and stores them up. I still have a dreamcatcher at my bedpost and it was this symbolic correlation that helped to steer me in the direction of the dreamcatcher for my branding and logo.
More Than Just A Dream
When God begins a new work in you He is faithful to complete it, and I believe this wholeheartedly. Despite the struggles and trials, He will complete His work in you if you are faithful to nourish those dream seeds He planted inside of you and in the process, He will reveal and help grow new dream seeds you may not even be in tune too until after some of those very same trials take place. I know this to be true from personal experience. I have always been in tune with my passion for reading and writing and words in general. What I didn’t learn about myself until after some living and real-life trials, was that I also had a passion for parties, memory making, and all-around event planning. I enjoy getting people together to celebrate our milestones and accomplishments. I love to make memories and I really love to use my dazzling side to create memorable and personal events filled with dazzle and detail. Visit My Dazzling Events to see how God has and continues to encourage me to use this passion in my Dazzling Business journey too.
“Because time is limited and our days are numbered we must take the time to celebrate ourselves and each other and dazzle those days away together!”
~Rebecca Jackson
The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer
My husband and I have spent a decade of our professional lives going from one opportunity to the next looking for careers in the traditional sense, trying to find a company and leadership we could not just be employed by but also help to grow and evolve within, turning those employment opportunities into careers. Time and again we would dive into new opportunities head first, excited for the direction we felt we were led by God to take, ready to find a new career home, only to have those opportunities deflate and inevitably wreaking havoc on our finances, our relationship at times and also our emotions. Each time making us question if we were hearing His will in our lives correctly and each time bringing a new set of obstacles. Faithfully we pushed on, prayerfully seeking, and waiting for His answers in His timing. A few years ago we closed up one of our most challenging seasons to date and at that time we found ourselves becoming increasingly curious about entreprenuership. We have both always dreamed of being self-employed, business owners who have built a legacy for our family and employment opportunities to create a nurturing career home for others. Through the years we have tossed around a few different routes we could take if we ever found ourselves in the financial place to do so. We were good at dreaming about being entreprenuers, but we weren’t really ever at peace with what that would look like in our own life or how we would even begin to fund those dreams. Enter doubt and inappropriate timing. This time though, things seemed different.
It was at this juncture, at the end of our most challenging, pain filled, wilderness of a season when we didn’t know how much further we could walk, that for the first time, we felt God steering us more and more in the direction of becoming business owners and we were suddenly in what could only be considered at Godly peace with the idea, and the paths that needed to be taken, suddenly seemed to glow in front of us. In a flash, we had plans, more than one, and like math problems solving in front of our eyes, connections were being made in our past as to how and why some of our failed employment experiences were neccessary to get us to this revelation and our specific business plans. In a clear series of God-instances, we had gained experiences, contacts, friendships and continued relationships in many ways that can, have and will continue to help our business plans grow. With renewed excitement and a better understanding of God’s will for our family, we began taking steps to make our dreams more than just dreams. We are turning our dreams into our legacy.
Your Dreams Can Define Your Legacy So Don’t Treat Them Carelessly
For us, small business is likely to play a large role in our legacy as people in this world. Our world is only as amazing as what we bring to it in God’s honor and will. He designed each and every one of us to do big things in His name if we are brave enough and trusting enough in His love to act. We can dream until we are blue in the face but we won’t do big things in His name until we take a step, and then keep taking steps. We can stay in our comfort zones forever but I believe if we do, we will only create subpar versions of our legacy. God does BIG things when we step outside of our comfort zone. Like my favorite bible verse confirms, God does have plans for you and those plans are not to torture you and punish you spitefully for your missteps, but rather to benefit you, for your good and well being, He has plans filled with hope and a future, be it here on earth or eternally in Heaven. We are only as good as what we bring to the world, what we say, write, or imply means nothing if we aren’t acting in positive forward motions and actually achieving things in His glory. We are what we DO, not who we SAY we are. Actions speak louder than words and this is one of those reasons. God makes things happen when we step out in faith, He wants us to step out in faith so we can fulfill the legacy He has written for us. Stop letting the unproductive thoughts and malicious intent of Satan rue over your dreams.
God’s plans are good for you brothers and sisters in Christ, you just have to take that first step of faith in His will and direction for your life. I encourage you to tap into the dreamer in you and dig into your heart for those unfulfilled dreams buried in there just collecting dust. This is a great place to start figuring out what direction to begin heading in. The next thing I am going to encourage you to do is to pray and then pick up your bible, even if you haven’t prayed in years and have to dust off that bible too, don’t be ashamed just begin again. He wants you talking to Him and in His word, it’s His most efficient ways of communicating His will and direction back to you. He has laid out the groundwork, a manual of sorts, we just have to remember not to be too proud to prayerfully consult the manual regularly. Like in this verse from Jeremiah that I referenced before, not only does God promise you all the things in verse 11 but if you read on to verses 12-14 you get instructions on how to aide in those plans playing out according to His will.
12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.[b] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Jeremiah 29:12-14 New International Version (NIV)
God’s Promises Are Worth The Work
Wow! That’s incredible, not only does He tell us to come to Him and pray to Him, He ensures us He will listen. If We seek Him we WILL find Him when we seek from within our whole hearts, AND as if that’s not enough comfort, He goes on to encourage us that He will bring us back from captivity, picking up all the broken pieces, from all the places we strayed, and He will bring us back to Him. We just need to seek Him and be ready to let Him work. Work in our lives. Work in our hearts. Work in our legacies, and of course, work in our dreams. He doesn’t ever promise it will be easy, He almost guarantees it will not be easy and that is still okay because He has our back and He knows His plans for us, all we have to do is wisely seek His counsel and get ready to start taking steps outside of our comfort zone on the regular. I for one believe it’s worth it, anything worth having is worth working hard for and God’s promises are no exception!
Now Go Chase Your Dreams, God’s Been Working Hard To Catch Them For You…
…After All, He Is The One Who Planted Them In The First Place
Thanks for reading along this mini-series and learning more about me, my past, who it’s made me and who I keep striving to be as a part of my lifestyle, goals, mission and personal convictions. I hope you enjoyed getting to know where my Dazzling, my Domestic, and where my Dreamer all come from and how together they create the trinity of me (not to be confused with the actual trinity, as in the Father, Son & Holy Spirit). I have enjoyed documenting this portion of my journey for you and to have it become a part of my written legacy that I will leave behind someday. I encourage you to find your dreams, your passions, and your hearts desires now and begin acting on them while you still have breath in your lungs to do so. Don’t waste your days keeping up with the Jones trapped only within the mundane hampster wheel of everyday life. Use your life to it’s fullest, look outside yourself for needs that your passions can fill, directions that your dreams can take you to help, and if every day can’t be exciting because mundane is a must sometimes, then look for ways to bring adventure into the mundane, look for ways to dazzle where you are, and appreciate the mundane tasks for the blessings and comforts they represent. What we give to this world, the people around us and the legacy we create are the only things we will leave behind for our families and communities. Let’s try hard to not let our legacies be wasted in our comfort zones because our families and our communities deserve the best of what God can do through us, and He does His best work when we step out of His way and out of our comfort zones!
Have A Dazzling Week!
~Rebecca
The Dazzling Domestic Dreamer 