to show your dreams to someone else." Erma Bombeck's quotation hit me right smack in the gut. Telling someone what I hope to do or accomplish is also saying out loud to myself that I will. So far, there are two challenges here.
What if I don't do what I say, and what if someone I trust to appreciate my dream, doesn't?

I am not a "what if I don't" kind of person, so am reminded of something someone said: "Orville, it'll never fly." Not that Orville Wright, or his brother, Wilbur, invented the airplane all by themselves, but the next time you hear a jet going over, you may want to give those two dreamers a moment of appreciation for not giving up on their dream.

I don't know why there seems to be more negative in the world than positive. You'd think it would at least balance out.

Could it have anything to do with a shortage of dreamers, or enough ordinary people wanting to accomplish something so much they'll keep at it, util they do? Have people become so used to a settle for life that they don't yearn for anything better?

Think about it, although they may not say it, they have to feel the emptiness of not dreaming. How can anyone feel good about that!

When you come along with your high minded dreams, it reminds them they won't try. That's when you can know what someone is made of.

If they would disparage what you hope to do, to salve the bitter gall of their not dreaming, you would be wise to choose someone else to tell yours to.

I'd like to tell you a story, a real life story about one woman's dream, and how far reaching it not only grew, but continues.

I won't bore you with many dates and places I might lull you to sleep with, for I don't want you to miss what one person reaching for a dream can do.

If you're a detail person who enjoys exact data, it's all shown in Debra Faulkner's wonderful book, "Touching Tomorrow", about this outstanding lady.

She was born in Cincinnati,Ohio in 1868. Lived a while in Nebraska, where she taught school. She came to Denver, and that's where her dream grew.

Like many who taught in our country in her time, Emily Griffith began with what education she could get. This reminds me a little of the Mark Twain quote we wrote about last week. Not that education isn't important, but maybe there's more than one way to get it.

Miss Griffith continued teaching in Denver. Faulkner's book gives much detail about her efforts, as her dream became airborne.


I first heard about her in the 70's. Like her, I had only an official 8th grade education, but a dream was growing in me too. I just didn't realize it at the time.

It didn't happen for a while, but don't let that discourage you. Even dreams sometime take time to grow.

I was working as a mail runner in an advertising company in Denver. I noticed a commercial artist's drawings, and asked how she learned to do the art work. She told me she got her training at the Emily Griffith Opportunity School.

Today, about thirty years later I realize that conversation wasn't happenstance.

I bumbled around a few years looking for a knight on a great stallion. Didn't find him, and after more searches for him, ended up back in Denver, almost destitute.

Some good people helped me, and after a while I thought maybe I could do better than just clean cafeteria tables.

I worked my hardest ever as a nursing assistant. Long ago I would see my aunt put on her white starched uniform and go to work. She always seemed happy about it.

I was not happy about nurses aid work. It was hard! Having to lift patients in and out of bed, and changing and cleaning them wasn't pleasant.

But the idea had been planted by the artist in the advertising company. At work in the nursing home, I noticed what the nurses did, and then I remembered the artist had said the school she went to taught many subjects.
So I got the phone number and called, and the rest, if you'll pardon an over used expression, is history.

I didn't succeed with my first try. I had started the training, and when we got to what to me was heavy math, I was terrified. I had been married, and had six children, back when c-sections weren't yet done, but until I dreaded that math so much, I did not know what a panic attack was. My throat would almost close up. So
I dropped out of training.

Isn't it amazing how God uses even the unpleasant to show us something we need to look at. I had to have surgery, and while in the hospital, and noticing the nurses working, realized I had already learned quite a bit in my first nurses training.

Two weeks after surgery, and certainly not telling anybody at the school offices about it, I enrolled again, to give it another try.

No, it wasn't just a try. I didn't know how I would deal with the math, but I knew one thing. I would finish.

I taped a "can do" I clipped from a magazine on my locker door, and beneath the "can do" facetiously wrote: "Don't get married this year".

Like Indian chiefs and our country's military, every time I opened that locker door I saw my battle cry.

Do you think Emily Griffith sometimes needed courage, not just to tell of her dream, but to see it through? Every day I was in school I needed a lot of it. But that just made the finishing it sweeter.

You want to know how big a dream can be? Long after she walked and breathed, and gave life to her hope that poor folks and their children could be educated, a number of people, a number so big I can't even imagine it, today have hope for their dreams, because Miss Emily did.