do you ache?

i have this dream, although it didn't feel like a dream at the time...more a not so distant memory. because, in fact, it's incredibly vivid. there was a summer--about five years ago--that i spent at a camp on a lake singing. and i had always loved singing. call it a childhood fantasy, i remember longing to be a singer when i got older, amongst other things of course--ice skater, detective, astronaut, lawyer--but singer was always there, lingering.


and that summer, my passion for singing--for leading worship to be precise--exploded.

so much so that i began considering not attending university the next fall...tempted to apply to this worship school i was told i should go to time and time again. and it was odd. so many people that summer, in various circumstances brought up this school. or was it odd? was it divine? was it where i should have gone? was it what i was meant to do?

instead i did the proper thing, the 'right' thing, the thing my parents insisted i do--finish my degree. i rolled my eyes and agreed, telling myself there would always be time to pursue this, this calling--as i truly felt it was.

flash forward four and half years later.. i sit here. that childhood fantasy, that dream, that calling, that passion lingers even still. like a steady pulse. a throb of some sort. an ache. ohh i ache.

do you ache? do you long for something so deeply, so fiercely, so tenderly, as i?

is there something deep down you have always yearned for but never went after? something that no matter how hard you try to stuff down and turn your head away from, keeps tip-toeing its way back to your heart?

what do we do about this sort of thing? because even now as i long and dream and wish and hope...fear comes along. it tells me it's too late. it tells me there was a reason i never made the worship team in college...and i stuff down my ache once more.