One night I had a dream in which a local zoo had started a new program allowing people to borrow their animals to take home overnight or for the weekend, in order to help people better understand and feel more connected with the animals and with the zoo. I thought this sounded like fun so I went to the zoo expecting to bring home a small furry rodent or primate in a cage that we could enjoy for the weekend.
By the time I got to the front of the line, the woman behind the desk informed me that all the small animals were gone and all they had left was the elephant. “Is your yard big enough for the elephant?” she inquired.
“Well, no, it’s not,” I replied picturing my small yard with no fences. The woman shrugged and spread her hands.
“I guess I’ll just have to come back when my yard is big enough for the elephant,” I murmured as I turned and walked away. End of dream.
Now, I have vivid, interesting, and often very funny dreams all the time. As though my waking mind doesn’t come up with enough outrageous stuff! My husband is constantly entertained over breakfast by what my sleeping mind has dreamed up the night before. However, when a dream keeps coming back to my waking mind for several days after, I assume that God is trying to tell me something. (I don’t know about you, but I believe that God still speaks to us in dreams.)
The question, “Is your yard big enough for the elephant?” kept recurring and I began to see it as a metaphor for my life. I have some big dreams and plans but this nighttime dream made me ask if my beliefs were big enough to support the elephant that represents my goals.
So often we can see where we want to go and we may even know the path to get there, but our beliefs get in the way of taking the next steps. In the same way that trying to keep an elephant confined to a townhouse garden will leave the poor thing no room to move, trying to grow a big dream with the belief that we are only allowed to have a small one means the dream will get stuck in that little space to which we have confined it.
We have to enlarge our territory, expand our possibilities, and increase the size of our beliefs in order to give a dream room to move and grow. That means enlarging what you think is possible for you. One way to do that is to look at what others have done before you. Say to yourself, “If she or he can do that, so can I. That person has nothing that I don’t have – two eyes, two ears, a brain, etc. so there is no reason I can’t do it, too.” Even if you want to accomplish something that hasn’t been done before, there are examples to follow. Other people have also done what has not been done before. If that weren’t the case there would be no breakthroughs in science, medicine, inventions, or ideas. More importantly, if God gives you the dream then he thinks you can do it. That means that you can since he will enable you.
Now when I come up against limiting thoughts like, “Oooh, I don’t know if I can do that,” I stop and ask myself the question. “Is my yard big enough for the elephant?” If not, I need to get a bigger yard. It is only then that I’ll get my elephant.
