JOEY

When a joey is born, it is extremely underdeveloped. A newborn is about the size of a jellybean and weighs less than a gram. It is blind, deaf, and hairless. The little living jellybean, using its tiny arms, crawls into the mom’s pouch, latches on to one of her four teats and there it stays for the next four months or so. The mom provides every need. By now you have surmised that joey is not my nephew or your neighbor. A joey is a baby kangaroo.

For the next 12 months, the small animal emerges to explore the world but returns to the pouch for protection and nourishment. Weaning happens when it reaches the size of a large house cat. Carrying a joey is messy business. The joey defecates, urinates, and tracks dirt into the pouch. The mom, like all good moms, cleans it out. The mom is capable of nursing four joeys at four different development stages simultaneously and or holding a fertilized egg until the environment is conducive for birth.

Joeys are our dreams and aspirations. We are the momma kangaroos. Think about it. Dreams are often conceived from a need we see in the world. They start off as a small thought.

A few years ago, I became concerned about using unhealthy skin care products (several friends were diagnosed and treated for breast cancer). I felt the need to change how I serviced my body. Gradually, I started purchasing products produced by companies who are committed to using safe and clean ingredients. I now make most of my own skin care products. My family and friends have benefitted from this joey. While this joey has “matured,” other dreams are at various stages of development.

My head is full of ideas – not all are viable. The environment needs to be right and multiple dreams can be nurtured simultaneously – but like the little jellybean, the dream needs to be born, crawl into the pouch and gradually exposed to the world.

Raising and nurturing the dream to maturity is messy business. One makes mistakes. We share our dream with others. The dream can be knocked down, stepped on, crushed, and then hobble back to the heart pouch tracking in dirt and debris. Like the momma kangaroo, our job is to clean the dream and the pouch utilizing our wisdom, experience and encouragement from others and cast it back into the world repeatedly until it is weaned and able to sustain itself. The dream grows up. If we don’t, the dream dies and a little of us dies with it.

The poet Langston was right when he penned these words, “Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.”

Proverbs 29:18

PONDER THIS THOUGHT—A dream without the messy work is like a stillborn baby