Heart Pocket Word for the Day is Prepare!

 The word from my heart pocket is Prepare!

It's easy to understand what it means to prepare when we look at a garden. If we have even planted one seed, we know that something can grow or not grow based on the conditions that surround the hopeful beginning. 

To prepare is to make ready. Young parents make their home welcoming for their expected child. Entrepreneurs write business plans and imagine the look and feel of their ventures before taking the big steps. Preparing means thinking and dreaming, discerning and imagining different ways a thing can come into your life.

Thinking. We think of an idea. We immediately begin to dream. The thinking continues parallel to the dreaming and we research and ask questions and explore the nature of the idea. As our thinking gets bigger, so does our dreaming. We begin to organize our thoughts. And still we dream. 

Dreaming. It accompanies us through every step of preparation ... or so it does with the liveliest of ideas! Our dreaming is a balance to all of that thinking and number crunching. Our dreams propel us and are the essence of the focus. We cannot properly prepare without our dreams by our side. If we let the thinking take over, the idea becomes lifeless and mechanical and not about what we intended.

Discerning. There are endless good ideas. As we focus on ours, others come in front of us as possibilities. This happens while we are thinking and exploring the main idea. Sometimes a new idea comes that adds to the original. We might have an even better idea to replace the first one. We look at each one and we see if it fits into the dream? It doesn't? Does it feel good to amend the dream to include this new idea? Does it feel good to put this idea inside your idea pocket to save for another dream? We are preparing the road to our idea when we discern. We are weeding the garden, throwing away the parts that don't apply and replanting others in a different garden.

Imagining. Imagining is similar to dreaming but it is the mechanical part. It is the filter through which our dreams and ideas flow. We can change our imagining by adding and subtracting players in our show, moving the sets around, altering the lights. Props in place, rehearsing the dialogue, painting the backdrop, building costumes and sets. This is all preparation. It's creative and fun!

Preparation requires that we use all of our faculties. Preparation is athletic by nature and works best when it gets to rest its muscles in between sets. To prepare is smart. To prepare is wise. We learn from everything we try when we are prepared. The more often we work out with preparation, the stronger our capacity for ideas becomes, the more often our dreams come true!