“Rebekah,” my pregnant co-worker said to me one day, “there are a lot of things people don’t tell you about pregnancy. It’s not glamorous!”

I laughed at her choice of words, but understood what she was saying. What girl hasn’t imagined what it will be like to have children one day? What girl hasn’t fantasized that pregnancy is more, well, glamorous than it actually is? For thirty years, my co-worker envisioned being a mother and nurturing a child, but she wasn’t exactly prepared for all the crazy side effects that would befall her during the nine months she carried her daughter.

But pregnancy isn’t the only dream that loses its glamour. All your life, you dream of growing up and moving out and then it happens. You’re on your own. Independent. And suddenly you find that you just want your mommy. You set out with a plan to conquer the world, and suddenly it feels as if the world is conquering you. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen,” you think.

Because somewhere in your dream world, you have your life all mapped out, but you never left room for reality… until it came crashing in and destroyed your carefully-set foundation like an ocean wave rushing over a sandcastle. You immediately set to work shaping bridges and towers, but never anticipated the tide.

Life, in all its ebbs and flows, has a way of waking us up.

I sat down to write a proposal last week. First I tried to describe the heart of my book in two sentences. Then I allowed myself a page. And as I worked to describe and compare and sell my dream, I found myself growing more and more frustrated with this daunting task. This author thing, I realized, is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not glamorous. But it is worth it. Because whether or not it is everything I imagined it would be, it is my dream.

I cradled it, cherished it, nurtured it, and willed it into being. I’m an author. And I’m writing words that I love. And I’m writing words that I hate. And I’m striving to weave words more effectively and speak truth more freely. And I’m learning–always learning–that sometimes the things we didn’t anticipate are the best things of all.

Because my dream… it’s bigger than I am. In many ways, it’s not my dream at all. Many, many years ago, in a place I can’t quite recall, Someone breathed this dream into being and said, “Here, Rebekah, it’s yours. And it may not be glamorous. And it may not be easy. But you’re going to shape it and it’s going to shape you.”

So here’s to the not-so-glamorous dreams that make us who we are.