Truth from the Trenches
By Melissa Hart

Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself. You may be surprised at how easily this happens. Your doubts are not as powerful as your desires, unless you make them so.

-Marcia Wieder, author and speaker
Why is it when we think about what we want to be or consider a dream that has been planted in our hearts, one of the first things that comes to mind is the doubt? At least that’s what happens to me.

I have several dreams, but there is one in particular that continues to tug on my heart. Every time I ponder how this dream will come to fruition, doubt sneaks in and dampens the flame that illuminated the vision of what I would like to accomplish.

The thought of having hundreds or thousands of teenage girls in one place and encouraging them to be what God has created them to be, is incredibly real in my mind. Letting young ladies know that God has a plan for their lives and that they are valuable people simply because they are living and breathing, is a dream I’ve had for some time now.

I want young women to stop selling themselves short and to strive for excellence from the inside out. But when I begin to think about taking one step in that direction, I not only doubt myself, all of a sudden the circumstances of life create an obstacle. Then my confidence loses air and I begin to doubt I would have any impact on young women at all.

That’s not even taking into consideration the energy required to pile it on my already brimming-over plate. It only takes seconds to see the monster of doubt standing before me blocking even a shadow of my original dream.

Who else has a dream in the back of their mind that they have tried to cultivate, but come up short? How many times have you thought about expansion on your farm, but the financial doubts sting you? Or maybe your dream is to take over the family farm after college, but the feasibility seems impossible?

Or maybe your dream is to sell the farm and all your possessions to head to a foreign land and help the poor and hungry – but the economy sends doubt in to quench your spirit?

It’s time to tell doubt to take a hike. Keeping our dreams and desires front and center and taking intentional actions on a daily basis will take us inch by inch closer to realizing what we have been created to do.

While it may seem hopeless, we know hopelessness is a lie because hope springs eternal! Now is the time to focus on the desires of what we need to do for the dream to come true.

Knowing that doubts have no power over us makes it easy to take a swipe at the doubt monster and continue on our path of accomplishing the dreams that will not only make a difference in our lives, but in the lives of others.

Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.