For as long as I can remember, I’ve made lists. There’s a list for what I need to pick up at the grocery store, a daily appointment schedule; I’ve even taken time to think well into the future with five- and ten-year goals.

When our children lived at home, I wrote up goal worksheets for them. Every January 1, we sat around the dining room table, filled out the worksheets and read the ones from the previous year. The tradition continues: My husband Wayne and I spend part of the first day of the year talking about the twelve months ahead. We chat about commitments we’ve already made and set time aside for people we want to see and places we plan to visit. We have financial goals, recreational ones, personal goals and spiritual ones. It’s our way of laying out the year before God, telling Him the things we’d like to accomplish and asking for His blessing in order to see it come to pass.

This last time, though, I had trouble focusing on my goals. Naturally, I want everything I do to be wildly successful, but so many factors are in play that the final outcome is completely out of my control. Some of my goals seemed more like wishes.

Then one day, shortly after the first of the year, I drove past a billboard that read, “Some things need to be believed in order to be seen.”

I have a new category for my goal worksheets now: “Needs to Be Believed.” It’s a list that’s growing longer every year.

Father God, thank You for the dreams You’ve planted in my heart.