Dreaming Big

I do my best dreaming in the shower.

Not fairies and Ryan Gosling kind of dreaming, but world-changing and life-exploding dreaming.

I started dreaming those kinds of dreams about two years ago, dreams that keep building on one another and making me ask, “Really, God, REALLY?”

{Sitting here now I can almost hear Him say, “Really, dear one, really really.”}

It started with Beautiful & Beloved, a call I felt to begin a global marketplace empowering survivors of modern slavery. I found organizations working with survivors around the world, helping them to earn money with their creativity and talent, and I wanted to bring those goods together, allowing people to purchase fair-trade, hand-crafted, ethical goods that impact lives profoundly.

My husband and I, feeling called and confident in God’s plan, emptied our savings and began Beautiful & Beloved online in March of 2013. Then God flung open the doors to open a brick and mortar shop in November of 2013. I love Beautiful & Beloved, I love the opportunities that owning an ethical and fair-trade business has given me.

I have traveled to Africa {that is another crazy story of God’s faithfulness and miracles} to work with survivors, I have lunched with women changing the world through their nonprofit ministries, and I have witnessed firsthand the way God brings redemption to the most horrific of circumstances.

I dream that our stories can bring hope and purpose.

As it turns out, however, I am not a super good business owner. I don’t enjoy {at all} the businessy parts of owning a

business and have felt like a bad steward of what God has given me.

So what about my dream??

I think that Beautiful & Beloved is just the beginning of the dream, I think that I am meant to take it further. In the shower a few weeks ago I dreamed that Beautiful & Beloved was part of something bigger, a ministry, a story-telling ministry empowering those facing every kind of slavery.

Jesus was a storyteller, the best of all time, in fact. He told stories to give people hope and purpose, He told stories that taught lessons and strengthened faith, and He told stories of the Father’s crazy love and lavish grace.

I am dreaming of telling stories as well, stories that are my own and the stories of others who have walked down dark and broken roads. I dream that our stories can bring hope and purpose, teach lessons, and strengthen faith, tell of the Father’s crazy love and lavish grace.

I decided to once again take a crazy dream and ask God to make it real and make me brave. I am beginning a ministry called Reveal. I don’t know what I am doing {I never know what I am doing really} but I know that it is right.

I also know that dreams will remain only dreams unless you find the courage and faith to put them into action.

Beautiful & Beloved has been an incredible experience of chasing a dream and seeing it come true, just because the look of it is changing does not mean that it is ending. It’s a dream that is growing and evolving the same way that I am.

This blog, The Mudroom, is the dream of incredible women who want to share stories, women who want anyone and everyone to have the opportunity to be heard.

I am thrilled to be a part of something so special, and I am inspired because I have watched my friends follow their dreams, and I am so awed that even when dreams seem to fall flat they can propel you higher than you imagined possible.

What do you dream??

But really tell me, what do you dream and how can we make those dreams come true?

In Love,

Amber