Life is not an easy journey. It comes with a big responsibility. The huge responsibility of raising a family, of working on a job to sustain your family, the never-ending cycle of daily obligations, including unexpected urgencies that only alter and add more to your already full list of daily life’s duties and responsibilities, and many more.
And all those would take up your whole life; too often leaving you no space for other things to engage in.
Things like pursuing your dream.
And before you realize it days, months, and years have passed by; and you come face to face with one reality – the reality that life has passed by with something close to your heart left undone.
In that season of your life, a space of time have slipped by enabling you to look back and remember the dream that you have put on hold in place of life’s priorities.
Now – you think it’s too late to fulfill your dream.
Now – you think it’s too late to pursue your unfulfilled dream.
Do you relate?
I do.
Here’s my story.
The Realization
One day, I accompanied my son – freshly graduated from High School – to a job interview at his friend’s workplace. His friend assured him he’d back him up on his job application.
This was my son’s first job interview. His first opportunity to interact with the real world.
As he disappeared into the interview room, I wandered through the aisles, randomly sifting through racks of clothing.
Then a female voice echoed in the store.
“Attention valued customers,” the voice said. “Today is senior appreciation day. If you are 55 and over, we are happy to inform you that we are giving you a 30 percent discount on all your total purchases today . . .”
A brief reflection surfaced; It was then I became mindful to the fact that I was now standing in a new season of life. I was no longer the college student dreaming to pursue a writing career after graduation from the university.
And yet, up until now I am still carrying the same dream I have held in my heart since I was sixteen years old, or younger. The dream of becoming a writer.
I had woken up from my slumber.
And for the first time, I felt frustrated. Frustrated about not having stepped into the person I had wanted to become, professionally.
I had been contented, and had rested in my sweet dream of becoming a writer, but never really did anything to make that dream happen.
The Discovery
But amid my frustration, God revealed something to me.
Dreams don’t expire with age. Dreams belong to the spiritual realm, planted in our hearts by God Himself, and God will fulfill that dream for us and with us – in His perfect time.
And so fulfilling a dream doesn’t have to do anything with how old you are.
There are writers who wrote their first novels in their 50s. There are business professionals who launched successful businesses after retiring from the corporate world.
Usually, it is in later years that achievers attained the clarity and determination needed to surmount obstacles to achieving their dream.
And most of all, it is in later years that God calls out someone to finally accomplish a big mission that He has prepared him for since his younger age, as you can see from below’s stories.
Abraham and Sarah
Abraham and Sarah had been childless. Sarah is unable to have a child.
In the prime of their lives, they received God’s promise that they would bear a child, and that Abraham would be a father to many nations.
But this promise seemed to be not happening at all.
In fact, Abraham and Sarah thought it would never happen anymore since many years had already passed since they received the promise and they were becoming old.
Finally, God visited them (three divine persons came to Abraham’s tent) and told him that “same time next year a son would be born to them.”
Sarah who was listening secretly could not contain herself by what she heard and laughed aloud. Because she and Abraham were now old to bear a child.
But true to God’s word, Isaac was born to them in the year that followed.
Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90 when Isaac was born.
From this lineage came Jesus Christ, the Messiah, savior of mankind in the fallen world.
Moses
Moses was 80 years old when he led the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt to Canaan, the promised land.
His story began as a newborn Israelite who escaped death following the Egyptian pharaoh’s order to drown all Hebrew baby boys in the Nile River.
But his mother put him in a basket and set him out in the river at the time an Egyptian princess and her court was at the riverbank.
The princess heard his cry when his basket was floating in the river, fished him out of the water, and she adopted him as her own child.
When he was 40 years old, he witnessed an Egyptian severely beating an Israelite man and he killed the Egyptian.
Afraid of the repercussions of what he did, he fled and spent 40 years of his life in the Midian desert.
While in Midian, God appeared to him in a burning bush and ordered him to free the Israelites from the bondage in Egypt.
He was 80 years old.
And so, at 80 years old, Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, the land of milk and honey that God promised to give to his people Israel.
Caleb
Caleb was one of the 12 spies that Moses sent to the land of Canaan, the promised land.
While the 10 other spies brought bad reports about what they found in Canaan, Caleb along with Joshua (the other one of the 12 spies who would later succeed the leadership of Moses), thought otherwise.
Caleb quieted those who brought bad reports before Moses, saying: “Let us go up at once, and occupy it; for we are well able to overcome it.”
Years later (after 40 years), when those who feared and objected to entering Canaan all passed away, Joshua now leading the Jewish tribe after Moses, commissioned Caleb as one of two spies to scout out the city of Jericho, their first point of attack before invading and occupying the promised land.
Caleb was now 85 years old, and he along with his companion, succeeded in that mission.
At 85 years old, Caleb entered the strong and fortified city of Jericho.
At 85 years old Caleb claimed the fight for the portion of his reward, which Moses had promised him before.
“. . . and now, lo, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong to this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war, and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day; for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out as the Lord said.” – Joshua 14:10-12
And Caleb succeeded in taking the land from the Anakim and got the portion of his reward.
He was 85 years old.
These examples are ancient, you may say.
But these are real examples of how far, and what great achievement, people can attain in the later years of life.
20th and 21st Century Late Achievers
Of course, we also have contemporaries who gained success late in life. The most popular of them was the founder of KFC.
Colonel Harland Sanders
Sanders had been in and out of business. He went from failure to failure both in personal and financial life.
Financial relates to failure in business undertakings, and a dream he had long kept in his heart.
Having opened and run businesses that failed Sanders retired and sustained himself from his government pension.
But Sanders didn’t sit around following his retirement.
In his 50s he started hitting the road and went from restaurants to restaurants seeking to partner with someone who would help him promote his fried chicken recipe.
His early travelling venture failed miserably. He was turned down 1009 times.
But at age 62, Sanders started seeing success. He franchised his first Kentucky Fried Chicken.
At age 65, he established the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain of restaurants.
Nine years and 600 KFC restaurant chains later across the US and Canada Sanders was approached by venture capitalists wishing to buy his restaurants.
He was reluctant at first, but at 75 years old he decided it would be best to let his company grow beyond his own capacity.
He finally agreed to sell his share for $2 million ($15 million by 2015 in equivalent) and he would have a lifetime salary of $75,000, a seat on the board, majority ownership of KFC’s Canadian franchises, and he would serve as the company’s brand ambassador.
Sanders story is an example of how a man in his late age can fulfill his dream and achieve massive success.
It’s never late to fulfill your dream no matter at what age you start.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ingalls began scribbling stories in her 40s (while working as a dressmaker) but never seen a positive outcome on this endeavor during this time.
In her 60s she started writing the Little House books.
It was while writing these books that she started to gain a following.
At 65 years old, her book “Little House on the Prairie,” became popular and was made into a television series.
Her success as an author, an endeavor she started in her 40s, finally came when she was 65 years old.
Fauja Singh
As a child Singh had a disorder that made him unable to walk until the age of five.
But at age 89, Singh ran in the marathon.
He became the first 100-year-old to run a marathon in 2011.
He also became an Olympic torch bearer on two occasions, once at the age of 101, breaking several running records in his age category.
Julia Child
Julia Child couldn’t cook when she graduated college.
However, she fell in love with the French cuisine and started cooking French recipes when she could.
At age 50 She wrote her first cookbook and gained a reputation as one of the top French chefs in the world.
She eventually became the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute Hall of Fame.
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses never had a true education. She only briefly attended a one-room schoolroom.
But when she reached her 60s, she picked up her brush.
It would take another decade for her works to get noticed.
When they did, she ended up having her paintings displayed at the Museum of Modern Art.
By the age of 101, she produced about 1500 pieces.
John Fenn
Fenn landed at Princeton University following his first academic appointment at 35 years old.
He did research and published for years but with little to no success.
He was forced to retire at the age of 70 but soon after his forced retirement a paper he published at 67 got noticed.
And he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating a way to measure ribosomes and viruses, a method found in every lab today.
He was in his mid-80s when he received said Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Nelson Mandela
Mandela joined the activist movement in his country in South Africa when he was in his 40s.
He was arrested several times and later spent 27 years in prison. While in prison he studied Law.
When released from prison, he continued speaking out against racial segregation.
At age 76 he was elected first president of South Africa, becoming the first Black head of state, from 1944 to 1999.
The Best Time is Now
So, if you have a dream that has been tucked away in the back seat of your life, hear this: It is never too late. You are not too old to fulfill your dream. God does not operate on human timelines. If He has placed a calling in your life, He will make a way for it to be fulfilled – at the right time – in His time.
A Jewish culture dictates that, “one cannot begin to understand true wisdom concerning the things of God until he or she reaches 60 years old.”
I say the same with regards to fulfilling your dream.
You are most likely bound to fulfill your dream – if you haven’t yet – at 60.
So, take that first step. Write the book. Start the business. Learn the skill. Chase the dream. Not because time is running out, but because now – this very moment – is the time God has appointed for you to fulfill that dream.
