When you feel like you’re sinking, just float.
Lie back and rest.
You will be held.
Made in the image of God, we are created to create. We are meant to DO something with what we are given—our ideas, our talents and our dreams. God planted them within us for a reason. They are conceived without our knowing, but we sense it. Something is happening within us and we must take notice.
I sense something emerging within when I carve out time for silence. I am more aware of the literal and metaphorical images that present themselves. The peace and solitude of driving down country roads make fertile the ground of my mind and spirit. When the sky is 
huge, the ideas overflow. Gratitude overcomes me. Remembering a dream when waking, I know that an idea or image resting deep in my soul has risen to consciousness; that an image has been revealed for me to contemplate and learn from. In these moments of grace, I witness the birth of something new.
I can only believe that this comes from God, because I know it doesn’t come from me. I can’t think up stuff that good.
“…if you know and have been affected by your dreams you will feel in yourself a thread of meaning and purpose that is part of something much bigger than yourself. This is the faith that lives in me. If this faith corresponds to reality then our dreams, which are the Voice of the living God within, are also connected to the transcendent God who is behind all of the universe.” –John A. Sanford, Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language
“Just float”—this image came to me in a dream a few months ago. It was a comforting message because I was experiencing many worries and concerns. My dreaming self was telling me to release them, or at least to just let them lie for a while. But it’s not easy to “just float” when one is resistant, when one wants to manage, to fix, to control.
Simply letting go seems too easy.
As a child learning to swim, it’s frightening when a trusted teacher lets you go, slowly taking their hands from beneath you. You sense their support is gone, all your muscles tighten. You wonder, did I really trust this teacher? For a split second, you panic and your body rejects even the one you trust to hold you up, to save you. You will not sink; your teacher would not let that happen.
You are being taught how to trust. You will not sink if you just trust your body, your instincts. Once you lie back and rest, you are held, not by teacher, but by the water. It is a mystery that one is truly held.
Images are powerful, personal, purposeful. Sometimes an image comes to me, birthed either in sleep or awake, and I know I need to do something with it.
That something for me, at least for starters, is to create a SoulCollage® card. The idea or image planted within needs to be nurtured and brought to fruition. I need to ponder, contemplate, pray. What meaning does the image have in my life? Why did it come to me in a dream? What action do I need to take within myself? What do I need to take into the world? What do I need to embrace in my life to become more (Soul)fully me?
Creating a SoulCollage® card is a holy act of listening, creating and reflecting. It makes the imagined, concrete. For me, the act of creation opens up a Divine space, an Eternal Standstill, where time is timeless. I lose myself in the process of listening to God speaking through the images I have gathered, gently calling me to select, cut, arrange, rearrange and, eventually, paste into personal cards. The finished product speaks to me. I enjoy its beauty and marvel at how it came together.
Again, it’s not me that creates…I am just part of the process. I am receiving. I am co-creating with the Divine. Creating with images is a gift of grace that reveals something new—joy, comfort, understanding, peace. Creativity transcends the original idea, talent or dream. It becomes something new and meaningful.
This is what God does—create something new. Dreams become images. Ideas turn into action. Talents become a gift to others. Worries become rest.
“Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
So when you feel like you’re sinking, just float.
Lie back and rest. You will be held. God is standing beside you. You will not sink.
You are being gently guided, gently down the stream.
Card name: (of course) Just Float
SoulFully You 