#dreambigorgohome

Have you ever had a dream?

Merriam Webster defines a dream as “something that you have wanted very much to do, be or have for a long time; a strongly desired goal or purpose.” I think there are as many different kinds of dreams as there are motivations behind them. There are selfish dreams, vain ones, hateful dreams, wistful dreams, and angry dreams. There are dreams that are well intentioned, and dreams that have questionable origins. Regardless of their roots, our dreams define us.

How do you define yourself? What do you dream?

I have a dream. Actually, I have a lot of dreams. I dream of getting married, and having a few beautiful children. I dream of having a pretty house with running water and reliable electricity (that’s a really important distinction, people). I dream of competing in my first 5k and going on to run 10ks and eventually a marathon. I dream of traveling the world.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those dreams. I happen to think they’re really quite nice, and sometimes I like to paint this idyllic little picture for myself, of a sleepy Sunday afternoon in which my kids are playing quietly in the house while I cook dinner and read a book with my husband playing the guitar in the background. We live in a colorful house with lots of pillows and carpets and a swing in the living room in some far off place like Rio de Janiero or St. Petersburg or Bankok. There is possibly a dog in this scenario.

It’s a nice dream, and I hope that someday it comes true. 

                But it’s not my real dream.

My real dream, the one that fills me with fire and passion and moves me to tears and righteous anger, the dream that consumes me so much that at times I cry out to God, “When! When, Lord, when!” is a little different from that pretty little scene I just painted.

Do you know that there are approximately 2 billion children in the world? That every day approximately 16,000 die from hunger related situations? That’s one child every 5 seconds. Did you know that there could be as many as 10 million children trapped in prostitution worldwide? That last week, a terrorist group kidnapped 189 little girls from a school in Nigeria, and no one bothered to go looking for them because they knew they wouldn’t be killed-only raped and used as slaves, because they had the audacity to go to school? Do you know about the places in the world where police shooting children is an everyday affair, the places where children are told they’re soldiers, handed guns, and told to shoot their families or get shot themselves?

Is your heart breaking?

My dream is those children. My dream is to touch the lives of children around the world, to care for those that have no one to care for them, to reach out to the impoverished and the hungry and the scared, and to share with them the love of Jesus Christ and His power to completely transform themselves and their circumstances. My dream is to give those children an education, a livelihood, and a future. I dream of a network of homes and schools for children that offers hope the hopeless, and power to the powerless. My dream is to change the world by changing this generation. My dream is those children.

Sitting here in my office, at my desk in Mexico, where the sun is shining and people are laughing and talking, it seems unlikely that I will ever really accomplish this dream. It’s a big dream, and it would be easy to say, “Yeah, I could never actually do that.” I could even say, “Hey, I’m in Mexico! I’m serving! I’m doing what You called me to do-isn’t that enough?” It would be easy to push this dream to the wayside and let that cozy Sunday-afternoon dream take over instead, and name my imaginary children in my head while I debated if we should do missions work in Russia or China.

It would be easy to do nothing, but I can’t do that.

So this is just the dream, guys. This is the first step. Right now, all I can do, and all that is do, is pray over this dream I have with all that I have. I pray over the children that I don’t know yet. I pray for the people who will join this children’s organization that doesn’t exist yet. I pray for the property we don’t own yet, and I pray for the favor of government officials who probably aren’t even in office yet. Why? Because this is the dream God has given me, and I will soak it in prayer before it ever gets off the ground, because for me, it’s already started.

Dreaming big and praying hard,

Alisha

In case you’re new to this blog (I feel like my readership has grown to at least 12 people now) I’m Alisha, and this little blog is just me, writing about my kids, my dreams, and my struggles. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and that it has touched you in some way-because that’s my main goal-and please, feel free to peruse the rest of the site. If anyone would like to contact me, you can always email me at alishatomsen@lovehopemercy.org. If anyone would like to help me out in any way, your prayers are appreciated and do more than you and I could ever know. If you would like to support me financially, please contact accounting@lovehopemercy.org or send a check to Living Hope International, P.O Box 116, West Bend, Wisconsin 53095 with my name, Alisha Tomsen, in the memo line of the check.

Karina

Karina is a tough nut to crack. She is not what anyone would call verbose, and can has been known to start a fight or two just out of sheer boredom. When you try to engage her in conversation and she doesn’t feel like it, well, forget. And heaven forbid you ask her to brush her hair! It seems to me most days that she’s 12 going on 2, and that we will never succeed in getting through to her!

Karina and her brother and sister have been with us for a year now, and I will never forget the day they came in. Karina and her sister Eva were wearing old, stained,  and smelly clothing. Eva looked around fearfully while Karina glowered at anyone who met her eyes. Arturo, who was only eight, sobbed as their father left, and the girls just looked on with empty eyes, the question clear on their thin faces-what now?

To say that Karina and her siblings have been through some hard stuff would be an understatement. After their mother died, the girls were basically left on their own to take care of their younger brother. Their father is an alcoholic, and when he was able to keep a job he would be gone for days at a time. The family all lived together in a shanty made of aluminum and cardboard. The girls tried to attend school but their attendance was scattered, and they fell behind. When their father realized how poorly his children were doing, he began to search for a place to bring them, because he didn’t want them to grow up on the streets like he did. That’s how Eva, Karina and Arturo ended up at Esperanza Viva, but that’s not the end of the story.

Karina, as I said, is tough. Unlike her sister who wants to be friends with everyone, Karina doesn’t let people in easily, or often. In the group of girls, she often stands apart, isolated. She is a girl who has been rejected so many times by some many people she would rather just keep to the wings than experience rejection again.

It would be easy to write Karina off as a reject, as a problem child, as a screw up. It would be easy to label her, never taking into account that she is just a little girl who has been neglected, abused and rejected again and again. And I won’t lie to you, there are days when I want to do just that-because Karina is hard to deal with. She is stubborn and cranky and most days, it seems like I will never get through to her, no matter what I do.

Once in a while, though, I get a glimpse of an entirely different Karina. Once in a great while, she’ll come out of her shell, and the sound of her laughing will fill the room. She’ll smile-I wish you could see her smile, because it transforms her entire face. Once in a while, Karina will speak without trying to cause a fight, and will just play like the twelve year old that she is. After a year of hard work, we’re finally starting to see more of that Karina-a happy, hopeful, awkward-in-the-way-only-adolescents-can-be young lady.

It’s in those moments when Karina is transformed that a thin, fragile hope rises up in me: maybe, just maybe, in spite of the hurt and the rejection, in spite of the abandonment and abuse-maybe there’s hope for this one, too.