Dream in color.

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Growing up in the Tunney household, we had a family motto:

Dream in color.

Aside from my faith in Jesus, it's my biggest takeaway from childhood. As a little girl, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd answer without pause: "A missionary pediatrician to a Spanish-speaking country." It was true. And no one in my family rolled their eyes when I said it. I wanted to be a white version of Mother Teresa with a stethoscope around my neck.

Over the years, the dreams evolved just as I did. Don't they always?

I dreamed of being a nurse. I dreamed of living life in a big city. I dreamed a lot of dreams.

Throughout my time at home, my parents really fostered those dreams and didn't shy away from the extravagance of them. When I saw a boy learning to play drums on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood as a seven-year-old, my dad willingly took me to the music store that very same day to buy a practice drum kit so I could get started learning drums, too. When I felt called to spend a summer in the Amazon jungle - despite the fact that I'd never camped or slept outside - they sent their hearts and their prayers with me on an airplane to Peru.

I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately. And if I was really honest and dreamed in color, what would that big dream be? The one that's almost too sacred to utter aloud for fear it might lose its power?

It would be this: I want to be a writer. 
In some ways, I know that I already am. I write here; I write often. But I don't want to only write blog posts. I want to be a published author. I want to wrestle for days with words that turn into sentences that turn into paragraphs that end up printed on real paper.  I want my publisher to skim a few pages and shove them back across the table and tell me to keep working because I can do so much better (do they really do that?). I want my great-grandchildren to read my words on printed pages with yellowed edges and see a glimpse of the heart of Jesus.

It's a lofty goal. I don't even have a topic or a genre for this someday book. But I'm announcing it here, shoving it into the light, because I have to start somewhere. A girl can dream.