Find Believers // Heather Patterson

Heather Patterson 

When I first sent an email to Jon Acuff over a month ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know for certain that it I wasn’t expecting what happened.  I wasn’t expecting that I’d find a community, or a tribe. I wasn’t expecting to find a place where I would openly share my heart. I wasn’t expecting to find a place where I would expose and let go of my biggest fears.  I wasn’t expecting the fight that was about to take place.

But that is exactly what I found.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  Maybe that’s just what dreamers do.  Maybe when we find others who have carried and carved out, who’ve harvested and fought back those same feelings, we can’t help but to connect with them on a level that is void of context.  A level that disregards things like location and proximity and face to face.

There is something that happens when a person leans in close to you and listens to your heart and tells you they believe.  They believe in your dreams.  They believe in you.  It’s like you can’t help but to believe it, too. 

And what starts as a morning of laying some fears down on paper becomes laying them down for good.  And sometimes it’s easy and other times they don’t go down without a fight. But all of a sudden, you aren’t fighting alone.  Those same people who leaned in and listened and who started out pushing you towards that fight have stepped up beside you and this time, with them by your side, you can’t lose.

And fresh from your own battle and drunk from the power that comes from slaying dragons, you step up beside another, committed to seeing them triumph.  Maybe to the rest of the world it sounds absurd, but not to us, because that’s just what dreamers do.