I introduced this series last week with, the kingdom of God is like the pool toys. I am thrilled to introduce this next post, a gorgeous and heartfelt post from a very very dear friend. She asked me if writing about dinosaurs was too weird and I am so thrilled that I said bring it, because she did. If you are interested in writing for this series shoot me an email.

Faith Is Like the Dinosaurs

Growing up, my faith was a lot like the dinosaurs—or at least, the dinosaurs according to young earthcreationists.

Enormous and terrifying.

Unchanging and unyielding.

Created or handed down by God complete in their final forms.

Faith and dinosaurs were both used as ammunition in an ideological war. God used the dinosaur sagainst Job (“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook?”); we used the Bible against our teachers(“Were you there?”).

We were taught to set faith against our own budding sense of reason. The God who would do that would stop at nothing to make us his, even if it meant destroying our fragile humanity.

He was a being of teeth and claws who loved by force and exclusion while claiming to walk beside us as a friend.

***

Science tells a different story about the dinosaurs.

It’s more fluid and painful and redemptive than the tale I was raised with. I’m learning it late, now in my 27th year, as I fight past the programming that still makes me cringe every time I hear the phrase “millions of years.”

When you take the time to look, and listen, and learn, there’s faith to be found in an old earth, too.

***

The science of today tells us that powerful, majestic beasts roamed the earth long before our history began. They were diverse and powerful and dominated the world for eons and eons.

Perfectly tuned for their environment, they were the kings and queens of nature.

Then nature changed.

The world became harsh and inhospitable to the beings it had fostered. There was suffering and dying, fear and loss, mass extinction of a way of life that had persisted for—yes—millions and millions of years. The great ones died; the Tyrannosaurus Rex with his skull full of teeth; the Apatosaurus who could no longer find enough good green things to eat; the Ankylosaur whose armor was not enough to save it from the breaking of the world.

But even in the breaking, all was not lost.

The small things grew smaller. Some took refuge in the oceans; others took to the skies.

Tough leather hides gave way to soft skin. Feathers warmed beating hearts against the growing cold. The raptors learned to sing in the dark.

Maybe faith is like the dinosaurs.

***

The dinosaurs didn’t die. We know them still.

They are the Sparrows God watches; the Vultures who eat death and are reborn; the Canaries who warn us when all is not well.

They are the Songbirds, the Ravens, the Parakeets, the Chickens, and the Condors.

They are the Eagles—majestic and free, but born from eggs fragile enough to be destroyed by human industry.

Maybe God is like the dinosaurs. They gave up their strength, their armor, their fearful power to become our friends.

***

I’m still afraid that my bird-faith isn’t worth much compared to the dinosaur-faith I was taught.

But the birds outlived the dinosaurs.

I think there’s hope in that.

By Elizabeth Kays

Find more of Elizabeth right here.

After four years studying Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a year working on a solar power prototype in Germany, I realized I enjoyed writing lab reports more than doing research.

And nobody should enjoy writing lab reports.

Now, I write for media outlets, websites, and blogs on topics ranging from science and big data to culture and religion. I also write scripts for informational videos as well as characters and branching dialogue for mobile and alternate reality games.

I am sitting in bed and I am tired. It is ten-thirty on the first full day of school. How did it get this late? I woke up at six and I have been pretty much running ever since. It is the start of the school year and there is just no other way.

I am sitting in bed and I am wired. I had writer’s group at the coffee-house and I needed a little pick me up. Did I mention I had been up since six. I probably shouldn’t have ordered a large. But I do not at all regret the brownie. That junk was delicious. So now I am going to stay up way too late, need coffee all day to keep me going, and then continue the cycle all week, I figure I need to break the cycle, but not today or tomorrow. Thursday is freshmen orientation….I guess we are looking at the weekend. It will have to do.

I could have cancelled writer’s group I guess, but I am learning to speak clearly and protect what matters to me. Is it a little nutty to keep the writer’s group date on the first day of not-summer-vacation? Maybe. But I am learning to speak up for the things that I declare matter.

I was given the gift of a week to discuss writing and get feedback. I came home wanting more. So I messaged the four other writers I knew in my area if they wanted to be in a writers group. To my utter surprise they all said yes. Every single person said yes. A few had been meaning to find a group like this for awhile. I was even more surprised and pleased when we all worked beautifully together immediately.

I just needed to ask.

One of the women in the group and I are on parallel journies. Both with book proposals we have been encouraged to continue with. Both of us with book proposals we have been sitting with for a few years now. Both of us with the idea that if we just keep blogging someone will find us, and ask us to write the book we already know we want to write.

If we just wait and want long enough, some day it will happen for me.

I know that is the story for some, a lucky few. But more and more I am learning that story that I have been told, that I have told myself, just isn’t true.

I need to ask.

If I want something, I need to ask. I need to ask to be published, I need to ask to get a writers group together. If I want it, I need to ask.

But somewhere along the way I was fed the opposite story, if you are good enough they will just come, if you are supposed to do it, it will just happen, if you want it bad enough you don’t actually have to do the work, the universe will conform around you. This is a lie. And it kept me silent and waiting for years.

I’m all done with that now. I don’t know if I will ever become a traditionally published author, but I am sure going to try like hell. And I am going to ask for what I need.

What if you stopped waiting for permission and just gave it to yourself?

What if you let yourself figure out what you needed, and then asked for it?

What if you stopped waiting for someone else and decided to be in charge of your own dreams?

What if you didn’t have to do it alone?

I designed this e-course, because I believe that you are capable of making your own dreams come true, regardless of the life that you live. A mom with a full-time job and two kids in diapers isn’t supposed to write a manuscript while her husband works for the summer, but I did. Mostly I did because someone else made room for me. I found a tribe who told me I could do it, but just in my own way. I stopped seeing what I didn’t have and took advantage of what I did. I made it work, and so can you. 

Room for dreaming starts with the premise that the life and the dreams that you have right now, are meant to fit together. Together, we figure out how. Sign up before August 17 and get the early bird rate!

This class makes when ten people sign up. I would greatly appreciate you sharing it with your people. The content is completely written and I promise, it is good. Really good.

I go back to work tomorrow, and I am not ready. I left the school year last May burned out and washed up, crying uncontrollably as I got a manicure before graduation. I was so, so tired, and wondered if I could ever be restored. It had been a long time in this desert season, would rain ever come?

Then it did. At two beautiful weddings, and in a place where people said, I don’t really understand what you are doing but I respect that you seem to need some space, I was reminded that I am enough, that my friends and family love me fiercly, that it is good for me to rest. It rained in a perfect week on a writing retreat where more than just my gift for writing was affirmed. My whole self, how God built me, I was told it was enough, it was good. And I rested well. Everyone else handled the details, including loaning me the money for the mug I wanted to buy. I came home and took off for a family vacation in New York at the lake, and came home to a whirlwind road trip with a dear friend who I was meeting for the first time. We were everything we already knew we were, and a book idea that could only ever really be mine to write came out of her brain. Tailored like an expensive garment, to fit my story perfectly.

If that wasn’t enough, I started a writing group that has gelled immediately and am dreaming again about where ever life might take us when my husband graduates in the spring. I was telling my friend all about it, when she jokingly referred to my summer as a “vision quest” and an owl showed up in my back yard. I have a thing for owls. They see into the darkness, and I have one tattooed onto my left foot.

After all of this I still wonder, is it enough? Am I enough? Is this totally magical summer enough to get me through one more school year? Will this feast sustain me? For how long? I don’t ever want to be where I was last May. Is this summer enough?

I struggle with the enough question a lot. I have learned to do all my Christmas shopping before Halloween. If I don’t cut myself off I way over spend because in the holiday frenzy I do not ever feel like what I bought was enough. If I don’t carefully plan before I go to the grocery store, I buy at least double what I need for dinner parties. I just want to make sure there is enough. Enough. What is enough anyway?

Scarcity turns me into a hoarder, an overspender, an over-commiter, a mess. Scarcity says, there will not be enough for you so don’t give anything away, and YOU are not enough so you better figure out how to buy/do/go to one more thing. This summer was an abundant gift, but scarcity tells me it is not enough. I am not enough, that there isn’t enough of me so I better stretch myself just a little more.

But when you look at the lies of scarcity, through the lens of an abundant God, it is totally ridiculous.

Do I really think that an abundant God would give me the summer of a lifetime and then not hold me through to the school year? Would my family really think Christmas was ruined with 3 presents a piece instead of 4? If I ran out of food at the dinner party, what am I afraid would happen? The friends I have in my home would hate me? This makes NO SENSE. Scarcity simply does not hold up to the fierce love of an abundant God. It just doesn’t.

Maybe I do wish summer would hold on for a few more weeks, but I can rest in the knowledge that what I was given was enough. I am enough. It is enough.

This is my LAST love bomb for the summer. #Wholemama runs through August, but this portion is coming to an end. There is a piece of me that worries the weeks we did do isn’t enough, but that is scarcity talking and it is a lie. I have LOVED doing lovebombs with you guys. Seriously one of the highlights of an awesome summer. Don’t think this is an end to lovebombs. You can do them whenever and to whoever you want. I highly encourage it.

Leave a comment on this post to let me know you are in, then I will send an email Thursday that tells you who and how we are going to lovebomb them. Either blog comments or Twitter! Play along! Last chance!