What I Wish I’d Known

On Wednesdays we are thrilled to fling open the doors to all of YOU! We love hearing your stories…the lessons you’ve learned, the roads you’ve walked, the dreams He’s planted in your hearts! Today we are excited to welcome Isabella Morganthal to God-sized Dreams. She shares some things she wishes she had known when she first began chasing her dreams. Thanks for sharing your story here today, Isabella!

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I was born a dreamer.

My personality is naturally extroverted and I’ve always been that enthusiastic, outgoing (sometimes crazy), believer-in-the-impossible. All I had to do was imagine a new idea and I would go after it wholeheartedly, even if it wasn’t guaranteed to succeed. Thankfully, not all of my childhood ideas did succeed.

Growing up, I dreamed of writing. I dreamed of serving Jesus in the foreign mission field. I dreamed of changing my world.

When I look back on the girl I used to be, I can’t help but smile. Even so, there are many things I wish I had known then that I know now. So many things I wish I could tell my twelve-year-old self.

But since I can’t, my hope is that somehow I can encourage you with the things I’ve learned over the years, and that somehow they’ll help you in your own wonderful adventure of dreaming.

Pursuing your dreams means risking failure. I’ve always been a little bit of a perfectionist. Okay, maybe I’m a lot of a perfectionist. Either way, I hate failing. And because of this I almost didn’t publish my first book.

Writing was my life and being published was my deepest dream. But the honest truth was that I was terrified of failing. I was so scared that no one would like my book that I almost didn’t publish at all.

Looking back, I would’ve missed out on such a wonderful adventure if I had let my fear of failure hold me back from the dream God had for me.

You might not know how it’s going to turn out, and that’s okay. He knows. He knows exactly how everything is going to turn out, and trust me…that is enough.

Not all dreams are meant to come true. Maybe the hardest part of dreaming is knowing that our dreams might never happen.

I still remember a season of my life where I held onto a dream I’d had for a long time. It seemed silly to some, but to me it was everything I’d hoped for. And then one day…it was gone. Circumstances in my life prevented my dream from coming true. I was devastated as I asked God why. My dream was good, so why did You take it away? I questioned.

Friend, sometimes our dreams don’t come true because God has a much better dream in mind. His dreams are always better in the end. The death of our dreams hurts. But what I had to learn during that difficult season of my life was that we cannot embrace the new dreams God has for us unless we allow some of our old dreams to be buried.

God’s got something better coming for you.

You’re never too young and never too old to dream. When I was fourteen, I used to dream that someday I would change the world. I wanted my life to count. But the problem was that I considered myself to be too young.

Sometimes I think as dreamers we put age limits on our dreams. “Well, I’m not this certain age yet so I couldn’t do that dream.” Or, “I’m too old to pursue this dream now, so I might as well give it up.”

Those are lies.

You are never too old or too young to pursue God’s dreams for your life. Think about Esther. She was most likely a young teenager when she became queen, and God did great things through her. Maybe this is your “for such a time as this” moment. Embrace it.

Friend, if you’re pursuing your God-given dream, keep going. Go after the dream God has placed in your heart. It won’t always be easy and sometimes your dreams may have to die before you reach the end of your journey. But it’s worth it in the end.

I promise.

Isabella Morganthal is a twenty-year-old writer, dreamer, and daughter of the King. She has been writing for as long as she can remember and has loved every minute of it. She founded her magazine ministry when she was fifteen and has self-published four books. She’d love to connect with you at her little corner of the internet that she calls Worth it All or at her Instagram. To God be the glory!

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