You Can't Out-Dream God

I’ve always been a big dreamer. I used to think my dreams were my own. And maybe God saw them and because He loved me, might let me have a few of them.  However, the longer I walk this journey with Jesus, I see that all my dreams were His first. And not only were they His first, He believes in those dreams and in me far more than I ever do or could.

This week has been a pinnacle of a lot of different dreams in my heart, and my brain cannot even begin to comprehend what is happening. All I know is that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…” (Philippians 1:6)

One thing I have learned about the Lord over the past couple years is that He is a much bigger dreamer than I could ever be.

This week two really big things happened in my life. I finished my part in recording an EP that I’ve been working on all summer with some very talented friends of mine. I also left Minnesota and road tripped across the country to move to Redding, California for Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Both of these things represent two very big dreams coming to pass for me. However, if I’m honest, I didn’t want either of these things when the Lord first put them on my radar.

When I was a freshman in college, I was in a very catalytic season of my life. I was on my own for the first time in a new city. It was one of the best seasons of my life, while at the same time, being one of the most difficult (isn’t that always how it goes). I was discovering a friendship with Jesus like I never knew I could have. The possibilities for my life were opening up before me. I was at my dream school in the program I had worked very hard to get accepted into. I thought I would be in Nashville forever and had lots of plans for how my life would go from there. However, one day at work I stumbled upon the website for Bethel’s school of ministry. I remember saying to myself, “In another life, that would have been really fun.”

It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but there was something in my heart that knew the Lord was inviting into something—something new, something dreamed up completely by His heart for me. This was something that was completely off of my radar up until that point.

Over the course of the next few months, to make what could be a very very long story short, the Lord made Himself very clear. However, it was less of a command and more of an invitation to trust that He knows me better than I know myself and that He wouldn’t lead me somewhere He wouldn’t go with me.

While something in my spirit seemed to immediately settle with the idea of going to California, my heart felt a deep ache accompanied by confusion. I was only four months into my college journey, and I was loving every minute of it. Imagining my life anywhere else seemed to betray a whole life’s worth of dreams. Nonetheless, I knew this was the life I had asked the Lord for—a life marked by the fullness of His presence and unwavering trust in His goodness.

Over the next couple months and years, it started to only make more and more sense that Bethel was next for me.

There were a lot of things that seemed impossible about going to Bethel. It was across the country, not just a long drive away; I was going to have to depend on God to take care of my finances to be there; I was going to have to leave everything familiar and everything I knew and move to a state I’d never even visited before.

While I couldn’t quite figure out how it was all going to happen or work out, but I knew it was the Lord.

This week I finished my part in recording an EP. This too was a dream all the Lord’s. I have done some recording in the past, as I recorded my first real EP as a junior in high school. However, I have released close to nothing since then. Much of this solely had to do with the fact that the timing simply wasn’t right. Although, there was a long season at Belmont where I doubted whether I would record anything ever again.

Looking back now, I can see that the enemy went to a lot of trouble in attempt to silence me. Some unfortunate incidents in high school combined with attending a college filled with some of the most talented songwriters and singers in the country caused me to start believing that my music dreams could only ever prove to be a source of pain.

The first week I was at Belmont, I remember going out on the lawn one night with a few fellow songwriting majors to share songs and hang out. I remember them playing their songs and thinking what am I doing here? I’m not even in the same league as these people. I called my sister that night crying. I wanted to come home. Never before had my dreams felt so silly.

While I obviously didn’t leave that night, a long season of fear and questioning if this was what I really wanted to do with my life set into motion. I think the Lord partly allowed the fear to stay for a season because He was dealing with a more pressing matter within me. Much of my freshman, sophomore and junior years were a journey of discovering how the Lord saw me. For the first time in most of my life, I was starting to see that the Father didn’t see me as a “songwriter”. He saw me as a daughter. Worthy, whether or not I wrote songs.

There was a freedom He revealed to me during that season—the freedom to never write or sing again.

It was a freedom I desperately needed. In a season where songwriting felt more like a jail cell than anything else, I desperately needed to know that I was loved—songs or no songs. The Lord never intended for my creativity to be my prison. He wanted to show me a garden. But before I could be led willingly into the nursery of life, I needed to know I was not being held captive.

The seasons of being a songwriting major were some of the most creatively dry seasons of my life so far. While it’s a longer story that I won’t expand upon here, one day I even found myself in my advisor’s office trying to change my major and shut the door hard on my songwriting dream.

The Lord healed a lot of my heart in that season and reminded me that songwriting didn’t have to be my identity. My voice did not have to be my master. He wanted to usher me into joy.

While freedom had become my new reality, with it brought new questions of its own. I had only ever written songs from behind bars of bronze; writing songs from freedom felt foreign.

For the first time since I started writing songs, I felt the freedom to walk away from that dream entirely. And to be honest, there were many moments where that felt like the better option. There was a very loud part of my heart that screamed, “ERIN, run while you can!” However, there was a very quiet whisper in my heart that spoke, “You want to write. You can write. You were born to write.”

It had been so long since I had written a song I really liked. It had been even longer since I had enjoyed sitting down at my piano with a blank sheet of paper in front of me. I specifically remember sitting down at the piano to write one evening, and after writing one chorus, I started to cry saying, “Lord, all I want to do is write a song I like.” I had finally realized that I was loved by the Lord no matter what songs I wrote or who ended up hearing them. But I hadn’t figured out how--or even if--the Lord would resurrect what felt like a dead dream.

By the time my senior year of college rolled around, it was time to face my fears. Since my freshman year, I had dreamed of performing in Belmont’s Christian Showcase. Only 4 people get to perform in it each year, and there was still a big part of me that believed I just plain wasn’t good enough. However, something in me knew I could trust that Jesus wasn’t teasing me with this one. I recorded demos of the only two songs I had written in the past couple years that I thought were any good and submitted them.

I made it to live auditions and got a band together. Terrified and expectant, I sat in front of industry judges and played my songs. After the audition was over, I walked into the room to receive feedback from the judges. I remember them laughing at me because of the shocked look on my face whenever they said something good.

The day after I found out I was going to be in the showcase, I remember spending most of the day on the couch crying. It wasn’t about the showcase. I was watching the Lord breathe life back into the thing that, until that moment, had never felt more dead. It was as if the Lord had taken special care to say, “I never forgot about your dream, even when you did.”






It was about two weeks after the showcase when I found myself in a practice room one afternoon after class. In 45 minutes, I had an entire song—a song that I liked, even loved. Soon after, I started dreaming of recording again.

While recording an EP sounded fun, I had no one idea where to begin. I met with a friend of a friend over winter break to discuss the idea of recording an EP in the summer while I was home. I showed up with the three songs I was remotely proud of, but I really wanted to record at least a 4-song EP. I felt a little silly even entertaining the idea with so many questions in me still left unanswered and not even enough songs to fill the album. While I was still finding my foothold in believing this could even happen, the few people I had told about the idea offered up their own faith for me to borrow while I was trying to find my own.

A few months later, I found myself in a room with a producer trying to narrow down song selections for the EP we were about to start recording—having to cut old songs to make way for new ones. A miracle only the Lord and I would know the weight of.

A little over a year ago, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to record again. I didn’t know if I would ever write the way I used to. In a way, I was right. I would never write the way I used to. Because I wasn’t writing from prison any more. He showed me my garden.

The week before my move to California we had a lot to do—most important of which was recording vocals for the album. If I’m being honest with myself, this was the part of the process I was dreading the most. This was the part of the process that made me feel the most exposed. I was just counting down the days until it would be finished, and I wouldn’t have to think about it any more.

We spent 36 hours in the studio in three days.

The experience was completely different than I thought it would be. What was covering me with fear was now becoming a place to come alive. I went home from a 16-hour day at the studio after finishing the last round of vocals at one o’clock in the morning, but you would’ve never known it. I was wide-awake. This is how it was always supposed to feel.

Miracle.

This album will be called Come Alive. What most people won’t see--or ever fully know-- is that this album is really the testimony of my own coming alive. And at the end of it all, I feel more fully alive than ever before. This dream that was on life support (at best) a year ago, now has blood coursing through its veins again. My dreaming heart is beating again.

And now, as I sit in the car crossing the border into California--a state I’ve never even set foot in until this day, a state I never asked to move to--I know I can rest in the reality that He will always be a better dreamer than me.

I have no idea what this season in California will bring. I have no idea how the Lord is going to use this EP. But I do know that He is a miracle working God. And I know today, better than ever, that He takes great joy in fulfilling his promises to us.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32