There's a lot that I love about this chapter, but I have a hunch that it'll be the shortest excerpt since I think this quote is more in need of an echo:

My father often quoted a simply yet profound statement by Edwin Markham (1852-1940) that sums up the attitude we need: "Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!"

(pg. 31)

The challenge in this chapter is to discipline your thoughts and be mindful of the environment we nurture those dreams in. But it begins with a basic realization:

But understand this: God did not create any person without putting something extremely valuable on the inside.

Far from being considered "Christianity-lite," that may be among the most difficult principles to abide by. Not just ourselves ... everyone around us. Reading through this chapter, I'm actually reminded not so much of the hurdles I may face to keep my own dreams aloft ... but rather, that I'm also a part of someone else's environment. But don't let me skip ahead a few chapters here.

Fighting though life is where I think we generally find ourselves. And sometimes, we rationalize the death of our dreams. Sometimes we just settle. I've found myself on at least a few occasions where I've accomplished something that required years and years of discipline, patience, faith ... and sometimes making some severe adjustments to my environment. Some, I've written about. Some, I'll save for the movie. My hunch is that we've all had a few moments like that. But do we all take the same lesson from those instances? Do we discern the differences between a dream that God puts in our hearts versus one that we conveniently slip in on our own? Do we sometimes even recognize the outcome in its proper context in order to even know that a dream has come to fruition? Again, that last one might be the toughest to deal with.