For years, my dream table lived only in a photo. It was beautiful. Round, dark wood with books lining the sides like little soldiers guarding their stories. A glass top revealed rich green leather underneath. I loved everything about it. So naturally, I did what any slightly obsessed person would do. I scoured the internet trying to find one.

Nothing.

I couldn’t find where to buy it. I couldn’t even figure out exactly what it was. Eventually, I decided it must be some rare antique that would be far beyond my budget anyway. So I did the only thing I could do. I saved the photo. Then I made it the wallpaper on my phone, and there it stayed for years.

There was no plan attached to it. There was no savings account labeled “dream table.” I didn’t have a strategy for tracking one down. I simply loved it and allowed myself to imagine that maybe, someday, I might have something like it.

It was such a small dream in the grand scheme of things but I think those small dreams tell us something about ourselves. They reveal the things that make us pause. The things that stir something inside us. The things we can’t always explain but somehow feel connected to.

Every day when I picked up my phone, there was that table. It was just a quiet little picture of possibility. Then one day, I saw it.

Years later, I was visiting one of the castles in Newport, Rhode Island and there it was. My table. It wasn’t the exact table from my phone, of course, but one like it. I remember standing there looking at it and feeling strangely emotional. I had stared at that image for so long, and suddenly I was standing in front of the real thing. I couldn’t take it home. I certainly wasn’t shopping for furniture in a Newport castle but seeing it felt like a gift. Almost like God whispering, See? It exists.

Sometimes that is enough to keep a dream alive.

Then life continued. More time passed. There were moves and changes and different seasons. The table remained something I admired rather than something I expected to own. Until one very ordinary day. I walked into an antique store. There it was. My dream table. The table I had saved. The table I had stared at. The table I had once assumed was too rare, too expensive, too impractical to ever actually become mine.

There it sat. It was affordable, and unbelievably, even filled with books. Sometimes I think we expect fulfilled dreams to arrive with trumpets. We imagine the big moment will feel big. But this one was waiting quietly in an antique store. I had spent years carrying the picture of that table with me, and suddenly I could reach out and touch it. What once existed only on the screen of my phone was real.

Today, that table is part of my everyday life. It’s where I begin my mornings with coffee and Scripture. And maybe that is my favorite part of the whole story. The dream wasn’t just fulfilled. It became a place where I sit with God. Now when I look at that table, I don’t simply see a beautiful piece of furniture. I see a reminder. Dreaming isn’t always wasted time.

Sometimes dreaming is faith stretching forward. It is allowing ourselves to hope for something we cannot yet hold while trusting God with what happens between the wanting and the receiving. That doesn’t mean every dream will arrive exactly as we pictured it. Faith isn’t a guarantee that God will give us everything on our wish list. But I do believe He cares about the details of our lives.

In Big Lessons from Life’s Little Moments, I wrote about learning to pay attention to the ordinary moments we so easily rush past because those little moments often carry the biggest lessons.

My table has become one of those little moments for me. It’s a reminder to notice, a reminder to hope, a reminder that waiting does not necessarily mean something has been denied. Some dreams take the long way home.

Maybe there is something you have carried quietly for years. Perhaps it’s a dream or a prayer. Maybe it’s a picture of a life you can see in your heart but cannot yet touch with your hands. Maybe enough time has passed that you’ve started telling yourself to forget about it. Maybe you’ve decided it was silly to want it in the first place. Perhaps life moved on and you assumed you were supposed to move on too.

But perhaps you don’t need to force the dream. And perhaps you don’t need to bury it either. You can simply hold it with open hands, trusting God with the timing, and trusting that He sees things you cannot see from where you are standing today.

Some dreams aren’t denied, no matter their size. Sometimes they are simply delayed until the moment they are ready to become real. One day, it might be a table filled with books. Who knows what tomorrow holds?

For now, I’ll be sitting at mine.

Coffee in hand.

Bible open.

Still dreaming.

One little thing before you go 💛

If you ever notice my emails have gone quiet, peek in your spam or junk folder. Sometimes they wander off on their own little adventure.

If you find me there, mark me as “Not Spam” and add me to your contacts so my next note finds its way to you.

I’d hate for us to lose touch.

Leah