Before you chase your dreams, read this

Dear Leah,

I wrote this column for you. 

I want you to live a life full of purpose. 

I have heard it said that the two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. I remember the day you were born. I felt so much love when I held you in my arms for the first time that I thought my heart would literally burst. You were birthed out of love and created for love. Love of the most extraordinary kind. 

You will likely go on to lead a life that is radically different to mine, and that’s OK. You will navigate different opportunities, face different challenges and make different choices in the everyday. You will forge your own path in the world and live your own life. 

Becoming aware of God’s presence

You are never too young to start having a real and genuine relationship with God. He is always with you. You can talk to Him anytime, anyplace and anywhere. I was quite shy growing up and found it hard to speak to other people but, from a young age, I found it easy to talk to God about anything and everything. I guess that’s what prayer is. It is also about listening to God as well as speaking to Him. One of the best tips on prayer I have ever heard is: keep it simple, keep it real and keep it going. 

Plan – but hold those plans lightly

I want to talk to you about the plans you will go on to make in your life because I am a consummate planner. Your late grandfather made sure that we were well-trained planners, ready for every possible eventuality with our organised to-do lists in hand. It’s OK to make plans and it’s probably wise to have some sort of plan in life but, just so you know, nothing in life really goes according to plan. If you don’t believe me, listen to the writer of Proverbs who says: “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21). 

I had a plan for what I thought my life would look like, but it certainly didn’t happen the way I had planned. Because God has better things in mind. The plans and purposes God has may look different to what you imagined; it may be harder than you thought, you may need to wait longer than you want to, it will likely involve more preparation and refinement than you anticipated. God’s plans and purposes may be more convoluted and complicated, but trust that God ultimately has your best interests at heart and sees the bigger picture. The journey ahead may have many twists and turns and ups and downs – the best stories and adventures often do. 

You may look around and think that everyone else seems to have their lives all sorted and figured out. It may appear that everyone else’s plans just seem to always happen but this is simply not the case. Deep down most people don’t really have a clue what they are doing (well, not really) and we all probably suffer from some form of imposter syndrome anyway. Adults may seem to have all the answers, but we really don’t. 

There may even be times in your life when you feel like a hot mess. Please don’t worry because this too shall pass. Everyone is like it at some point in their life – some are simply better at hiding it. God is not put off. In fact, our ‘hot mess moments’ probably keep us humble, which isn’t a bad thing because: “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble” (James 4:6). 

A powerful example

Your great-grandmother was a woman called Faith. She was born in China in 1921. She was a force to be reckoned with; no one dared mess with her. You would have loved her. She was fun, fiery and always had snacks in her handbag. She made Jesus her number one priority in life. She would probably tell you that she was a bit of a hot mess as a young person because of the difficult life circumstances she found herself in, but when she encountered Jesus her life was totally transformed. She experienced God’s love so deeply, she found it hard to describe with words, but this love brought her healing, hope and purpose. This love changed her priorities and reshaped her plans. She surrendered her life completely to Jesus – she spoke about Jesus and she served Jesus. 

When I was a child, she told me all about the miraculous and extraordinary things she saw God do in her life and reminded me that God has greater plans and purposes; all we had to do was pray, have faith, be available and make God’s priorities our priorities. I do remember your great-grandmother praying for us constantly when we were children; what she was praying over us specifically I honestly do not know but I do know that without her prayers, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now and doing what I’m doing today. So don’t underestimate the prayers of a relatively powerless elderly woman. Those prayers are deeply precious to God. 

I want you to live in a world where all things are possible because you have put your faith in the God of the impossible. There is no lid that anyone can put on you that God cannot lift off you. God loves you, God is with you and God is for you. In Luke 18:1-6, Jesus tells the disciples the parable of the persistent widow to show them that they should always pray and never give up. Leah, always pray and never give up. 

I love you so much. 

E-ma xx 

(E-ma is our own internal Chinese-to-English slang translation of ‘Auntie’, used in the Chow household.)

Katherine Chow is associate vicar at Holy Trinity Brompton in London. htb.org @htbchurch