How I Missed Meeting Chip and Joanna Gaines and it Was OK
The Letdown
That moment you realize you missed seeing Chip and Joanna Gaines. That’s right. I had the chance to see them and I totally missed it.
It was clear something exciting had just happened when I arrived at the Dream Big Conference at Magnolia in Waco, Texas. (If you have no clue what I’m talking about, check out my last blog post, “Why I quit my job and we sold our house to ‘dream big’”).
Confetti afoot. Mason jars half-filled with sweet tea. I was arriving during the last moments of a great party, where people were packing up and things were winding down. Yet, I could feel the lingering energy of what was. Meanwhile, while things were winding down and conversations wrapping up, I was coming in hot.
Jared and I had just high tailed it from Dallas. We had battled rush hour traffic after flying in from Minneapolis. I knew our schedule was going to be tight, driving from Dallas to Waco, but thanks to traffic and a wait at the rental car desk that would have frustrated a saint, I was painfully late. Way later than I had expected and definitely way later than I wanted to be.
Moments earlier, as we were racing into the Waco city limits, I had seen it for the first time. I saw the Silos at Magnolia and I had what I call a “Magic Kingdom moment.” You know, that moment when you’re with a small child who sees the Magic Kingdom at Disney World for the first time. They are filled with unexpected wonder as something from TV world comes to life. Well, that was me when I saw the Silos for the first time. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true.
So, when I finally made it to the dwindling party at the Magnolia Silos, I was expectant and very excited; for exploring my dream, for exploring Magnolia, and for the dwindling hope that I might meet the infamous “Fixer Uppers” themselves.
So, as I made my frantic entrance into the dwindling welcome event in all its confetti and sweet tea glory, that’s when they said it.
“Oh, you just got here? So you missed them! Chip and Joanna…they were just here.”
To which I said, “Seriously?”
They confirmed and my stomach sank.
Expectations, Revisited
Have you ever gone into a situation with a certain set of expectations, but you end up taking away something totally different than what you initially anticipated? That’s how things went for me at Dream Big. So, no, I didn’t have the thrill of meeting Chip and Joanna Gaines as I had hoped I might.
Instead, I got to learn from some very brave people who continue to do a very brave thing. They dare to dream.
So what’s so brave about dreaming?
I don’t know about you, but as I settle into my thirties, I see how easy it can be to swerve off into one of the following ruts: the rut of mundaneness (“Same stuff, different day.”) and the rut of despair (“Life if hard. End of story.”) It’s so easy to fall err to the mediocrity of life or become entrenched in life’s struggles.
What I have found to be the counterforce to those ruts, however, is the awareness of a deeper current, the current where beauty and dreams and creativity come from.
What if underlying and in the midst all the busyness, the schedules, and even the struggles, there lies a sacred rhythm and the purpose of that current is to bring about goodness, love, and renewal in the world?
Even more, what if the dreams that we have, when they are in tune with that sacred rhythm are actually a way we can participate in it?
For me, that’s the life of faith. To notice your passion, your dreams, your intuition, and to take them seriously; to consider them an invitation to live life in the flow of that sacred current. They are an invitation to live life fully.
And, yet, it’s a risky thing to trust your intuition.
There are so many voices every day telling us who we should be, what we should do, what we should look like. So many forces grasping for our allegiance and compliance.
So much of what we hear and see, the things we are fed in our culture are about appearance…image, productivity, status.
It’s all about outward goals rather than inward direction.
And, yet, isn’t it our unique intuitions, those things we’re drawn to and impassioned by that make us us? God’s unique creation, uniquely fashioned, individually loved, and wholeheartedly invited to bring about more goodness and beauty in the world alongside Him?
In many ways, those who dream have simply learned to pay attention.
I think that when we dream it’s really nothing more than noticing the life of our heart. What helps us come alive? Where do we see brokenness and long to do something about it? Where do our gifts and passions lie?
For me, I started to become more alive when I started to pay attention to my internal world and my intuition. I started to pay attention to my desires, what I wanted at the very core of who I was. I was changed even more when I actually started to believe that God cared about what was happening in those inmost places.
I also started to realize that at the core, what I really wanted were actually things that God really wanted to. Things like wholeness and connection, to feel deeply known and know and love others. It’s as if I realized God and I were in this together.
So while I didn’t meet Chip and Joanna in the end, I did meet some other heroes. People brave enough to notice their hearts, name their dreams, and go after them. To live life in the deeper current.
I started to believe that maybe this little enclave of “dreamers” was really on to something.
They were living lives of bravery and faith and awareness. They were noticing what was true within them and how that could contribute to a greater good and greater love. Desires to be a more engaged parent, or find creative ways to support children in the foster care system, or come alongside women leaving abusive relationships.
The dreams came in so many varied forms, each one of them beautiful and inspiring. My dreams and intuitions were strengthened those few days being in their presence.
And my time with them got me thinking,
what would happen if all of us spent just as much or perhaps more time cultivating the life of the soul, our intuition, or the voice of God within us as we did grooming our external image?
If we started to dream and notice our inner desires, longings, and passions we might bring even more Light and Life to the world around us and into our own life. Our eyes and hearts might be more poised to readily encounter True Beauty, versus chase the skin deep, counterfeit version so often sold to us.
So, it’s true. I had the chance to see Chip and Joanna Gaines and completely missed it. And, yet, I’d say that the inspiration and the dreaming heroes I encountered were worth more in the end than a selfie with my two favorite Fixer Uppers.
Photo credit: Tyler Wohlford
Please note: I am nowhere to be found in this photo. We were frantically driving from Dallas.
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