Hi City Church!  I’m Christy.  I'm sandwiched in the middle of the photo above :)
I’m pretty new to City Church so if we haven’t gotten to meet yet, help me out and come say hi!

Two Sundays ago, Kyle talked about dusting off our old dreams and taking some time to invest in the gifts that God has given us.  Recently, I have been taking some steps to dust off an old dream of mine so Kyle asked me to share about it.

A while back, my dream was to write a book.  My brother, Kenny, who is a year older than me, has Downs Syndrome.  He’s awesome and I love him so much.  I’ll bring him one Sunday so you can all meet him.  He is the reason that I wanted to write a book.  Growing up with a sibling with disabilities has had a major impact on who I am as a person today.  In good ways and some bad ways too.  There aren’t a lot of good resources out there about having a sibling with Downs Syndrome.  I would have loved to have had something to read when I was younger.  Someone to tell me that I wasn’t alone in the ways I was feeling when interacting with my brother.  I didn’t even have another sibling that could relate.  So I wanted to write a book for people like me, and I was excited about it. 

But over time I got lazy. And busy. And scared. And blah, blah, blah… I could give you a ton of excuses, but basically, I just gave up on my dream.

It had been a while since I had even thought about my old dream, but lately the idea of writing and the topic I wanted to write about have been coming up again and again.

A good friend had been bugging me about it for a couple of weeks, and Kyle’s message that Sunday was a good push that I needed.  One thing he said in his message kept sticking out in my mind.  Kyle said something along the lines of, “Why don’t we take the time to invest in our dreams when God has invested so much in us?”  I knew it was time to start taking some specific steps toward dusting off my old dream.

My first step was to pray for some courage to just get started!  Next I told some of my friends.  That way, they can not only encourage and motivate me, but also hold me accountable.  Another thing I have done is started my own blog.  I figured that if I am ever going to write a book, I need to get over my fears and let people read what I want to share. 

This is definitely a new journey for me, but one that I am excited to be on.  I’m looking forward to seeing what new ways God will stretch me and use me through it.

Thanks for reading about my dream and I hope I get to meet all of you at City Church soon!

 Christy