Simple Living | A Vision Book

And daily paging through

How do you capture dreams? How do you harness the ideas that keep floating back? How do you take an ethereal vision and loop it around a reality that you can see with your eyes, touch with your hands, and live with every part of your body, spirit, and soul?

I wonder this myself. I wonder if those things that keep calling to me, that have been with me since my earliest days, are there for a reason. There are lots of wonderings for me, lots of things too big and mysterious for my grasp. But there are also knowings, way down deep. And this I know: When we can’t see, we pass away. And all we were meant for passes, too.

Loves, I want to see.

I want to take the vision and hold it in my hands, page through, and know, again, and again, and again, every day, the goodness and beauty and hope that I’ve been made for. The things I’ve been made to do. Even (especially) when life is hard. Even (especially) when it feels like it might be spinning out of control. Even (especially) when the dreams seem so far.

In my hands, I hold a vision book. My vision book. It’s a tangible way of daily seeing what’s written in my heart. Of believing that my purpose is alive. Of opening myself to possibility. There are photos and words, pasted to the page, reminding me to see, then do, where I am, with what I have.

There’s no place in these pages for ego or edifice, for preening or pride. No place for building kingdoms or castles or houses of cards. It’s not a list of demands, or a litany of wants. It’s about leaning in. It’s about learning. It’s about the spark of understanding. About knowing deeply that I don’t ever, ever want to miss the little manifestations while looking past them for the big ones. We expect that dreams are fulfilled in one big ka-boom! when, mostly, they come by blessed occurrences sprinkled along the length of a life. So profound. So simple.

As simple as apple trees. When I was a girl, there was an apple orchard in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies just a few miles from where I lived. I remember driving down the long gravel lane in autumn and seeing the morning fog hugging the land, the houses, the rows of ruby-dotted trees. I vividly remember the sweet-tart flesh of the Macintosh apples, and how the bright red skin, bit through, tinged the crisp white of the apple flesh pink. The dream of one day having my own apple orchard settled itself right in.

I’m now in my fifty-first year and am still waiting for my apple orchard dream. But, loves, hear this: If I didn’t nurture the vision of a one-day orchard, I might have missed seeing the laden trees on the other side of the fence that day years ago, (and seeing the wild trees, full of fruit, every year since). I might completely miss the experience of walking out my front door, on land not our own, to witness the wonder of frothy blooms on one, two, three, four apple trees, come spring. I might miss the one-day, one-day, one-day orchard that we’ve not yet seen, growing right now from soil that is not yet ours.

You may have guessed, in my vision book is a photo of an orchard of apple trees. (There’s also one of knitted socks. Grin.)

Hold your vision, loves, right there in your hands. See it? See it. There’s life here, in these dreams, and we’re gonna live it, aren’t we? We’re gonna live it abundantly.