My God-Sized Dream: The Series Has Begun!

I am really excited about this God-sized dream series...I am so ready for this. Are you? Have you gotten Holley Gerth's "Do What You Can Plan" ebook? It's $2.99...I bet you can swing it! Whether you choose to participate, or simply follow me over the next few months, I am happy to have you. 
A few months ago ~ before I even knew about this opportunity ~ I wrote about some of my dreams in THIS post. I have been trying to figure out how to share more of heart with you here...helping you see that I'm real and quite imperfect, but that I have a dream in my heart. To be honest, it's kind of scary putting myself out there! I'm really nervous about what is going to happen over the next few months. But, I want to see more people striving for their dreams, and maybe seeing my story unfold will help you strive for yours...this is my wish. I am hoping that this little series will help you as much as I am anticipating that it will help me :) 

{photo by Mary Beth}
Sometimes I shy from telling people my hopes and my big goals because I'm afraid of what they will think of me. But, I am learning to get over that because my ultimate goal is to glorify God - not them. So, here are my big picture dreams: 
^^^ I want to be a stay at home wife, and in the future, a mom. Jeffrey and I own a leadership development business where we feel like we are making a huge impact helping other people one-on-one. We pursue this in the evenings for now, but I want to take on a bigger role and help our business grow. A "stay at home wife" probably sounds a little lazy, but what that means to me is time to pursue our dreams from 8-5. 

{source unknown}
^^^Jeff and I have talked for hours and hours on the topic of what we feel like our passion is. What is our ultimate goal? Well, for us, it is to glorify God through whatever we end up doing both now and long-term. We have seriously talked about starting a Christian youth camp, but we have done a little more soul searching the last couple years to find out why we wanted to start a camp. We realized that the "why" behind that idea was because we both have a passion for evangelizing and helping people get further along in their walk with Christ. So, a camp is really just one of many possible means to our dream. Our business is really small right now, but we feel that as it grows, our ability to help people will grow also. We also have a couple charities that we want to start regularly giving to as our ability grows. 

{source}   ^^^I cannot wait to design and build our dream home! It will certainly be on the beach...I can picture it. I want to travel the US and find old, worn wood beams and architectural elements to integrate into the design of the house. I want to use as much repurposed material as possible to add a time-worn, one of a kind feel. I could probably write an entire series on my ideas for this dream house of ours. :) 

{source unknown}
^^^I want our dream home to be featured in a magazine :) 
^^^I have started so many books...I may have started my first one when I was in Jr. High. Writing has always been an outlet for me, and I've known that one day I would put together a string of coherent words long enough to be considered a book. I know that the timing is not right, right now, but one day it will happen. You just wait and see :)
^^^Jeff and I would love to travel. We want to take our kids on missions trips and help them see that they are blessed and can make a huge impact by giving missionaries their love and time. I don't know of a better way to help kids learn to be selfless than to teach them to see and meet the needs in others' lives. We want to be the example of that. 
So, "out there" I have put myself. Are you ready to join in? Maybe you need some more inspiration...why not check out 100+ more wonderful ladies who are taking this journey with me. We are all linking up at HolleyGerth.com. Click that lovely box below to see her post and to see where I will be linking up.  {If you need some help knowing what this "link up" thing is that I keep talking about, read my post on the "What, How, and Why of link parties."}
I am linking up here:
{connect with Emily here}