So, yes, it is a pretty overused term and the line from a well known song, but what does it mean for you? I was reading a book, I know big shocker there, and one of the characters was talking about how her work gave her a loving feeling, she had always been most happy doing what she was doing now. She had fallen in love with a vocation early, then taken all the steps she felt necessary to have a career in this vocation. It lead me to think, had I ever had a loving feeling about something? If I had, had I done all I could to nurture it or had I indeed, lost that loving feeling?
I can tell you I used to nourish a loving feeling about the written word and history and was an avid reader early in life. For years my dream was to study at Oxford and edit books to the delight of my heart and other readers everywhere. I journaled habitually and once even dreamed I could be a writer. What happened? How did that dream of loving everything about my chosen path change to, well change to something else. Now this something else was not my dream, but the elusive ‘they’ told me I had an aptitude for this something else and could do well with it financially. And listen, when you grow up with few monetary extras, doing well financially at something was a dream hard to deny in any form. Everyone who grows up with little, wants to have that extra, no one wants to continue to struggle for their daily bread. I felt pressure to use my aptitude to forge a path that would bring me the elusive extra to my world. Who cares if it didn’t make my heart happy, I could make my heart happy later. But what no one tells you is later sometimes gets forgotten in the messy now. I didn’t just dream of being a editor/writer, I also dreamed of marriage and kids and family and community involvement. As I deferred the writing to a corner of my heart to forge a financial path, I did fulfill some of the other dreams. Those of marriage and children and family. But that something else I had pursued, left me aching on the inside and that ache bled throughout my life coloring everything with a not good enough brush and almost ruined my ability to see the joy in my life, to be happy. I learned that sometimes, losing that loving feeling for your life, is really close to feeling like you are actually losing life. How much loss of life can a person handle before it all goes up in smoke?
Well, I don’t know the answer for you, but for me, circumstances played out until I stopped trying to be what ‘they’ thought best for me because I couldn’t succeed at it no matter how much aptitude I had. I hadn’t nurtured that loving feeling for years, had ignored it for a different path, but it would not be completely denied. It may not look the same, a lot of changes have occurred since the original dream, but I don’t ignore that loving feeling I get from learning and writing anymore. I recognize that it is an honor to have that feeling and some time to cultivate it. I believe the Bible verse from Philippians 1:6 speaks to dreams deferred. It says being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. We all have gifts to use, not everyone will be a professional athlete or musician or known around the world. Some of us have the gift of leadership and head businesses, schools, churches, or little league. Some get to be teachers of history, or art. Maybe your skills at fundraising help give people the chance to experience ballet, jazz, or a day at an amusement park. Do you joyfully photograph people and places? Does your heart sing working with laboring mothers and their families? Are you just soaring with joy at the thought of arranging the shelves at the store into an artful display guaranteed to make me part with my money? Every one of us has a gift, sometimes using it will be easy, sometimes you have to look through the fog and recognize your gifts utilized in a non traditional way. But then one day we look up and realize that the good work in us is being stretched and used to brighten not only our own lives, but those of the people we come in contact with. And if you give it a chance, you will feel that loving feeling overflowing in your life. Try to find your loving feeling, I think we will all be better for it.