From Drought to Dojo

There’s a patch on my gi I never thought I would have.

Wait - let me back up.

I never thought I would even have a gi.

Even though I wanted to learn karate or Kung fu almost all my life, there never was a teacher, never the right time.

When I moved to small town Idaho, the dream—barely alive as it was— seemed to have died.

The only dojo in town had closed.

And since the dream had already shrunk to something no bigger than a carrot seed, I felt only the faintest disappointment.

I’ve been thinking of droughts a lot lately.

My area of the world just went through an abnormal winter of no snow. While not shoveling or driving on icy roads is wonderful, the most important reality is that we didn’t get the moisture we need.

Now everyone is talking about wild fires in the summer.

No water means things burn easily.

No water means seeds won’t grow.

And maybe, in a way, even our dreams need water.

We all carry something we’ve had to let go of—
a dream,
a wish,
a goal.

But instead of gentle raindrops and soft soil to nurture it, that seed of this dream falls onto hard ground. Maybe it catches a drop now and then, but it never truly grows. It lingers. Weakens.

Sometimes it fades so slowly we barely notice it’s gone.

It might end suddenly and completely—without warning, without hope of revival—leaving us gasping from the pain.

But this I have come to learn:

Seeds in the garden may look dead, but they might still have life in them.

Sometimes, all they need… is a little water.

In 2023, the dojo in my small town reopened. And that tiny seed of a dream—the one I thought was long gone—finally got a drop of water.

I signed up myself and my three girls. Nervous and excited, we walked into our first class.

And then we drank from a fire hose.

I never imagined I would own a gi. Now I do—and so do my three girls.

Last October, I added a patch to mine. One I never imagined I would earn:

a weapons patch.

Soon, I’ll be testing for my orange belt in weapons, quickly followed with a test for my green belt in karate.

I think often about that tiny seed buried in dry ground—
how it stayed barely alive for years,
how it waited,
how it endured.

I never imagined I would step into a dojo to train.
or that I would study weapons.

I never imagined I would know people who have trained longer than I’ve been alive
or that my fellow students and my sensei would become family.

What if we lived with the understanding that we never know what will happen next?

Yes, the unexpected can bring pain—there’s no denying that. But it can also bring something else:

the possibility of good things we never imagined.

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:13-14

Because some dreams don’t die.

They just wait—quietly, patiently—
for the rain.

And as Susan says in The Lion, the WItch, and the Wardrobe, “Let us go on and take the adventures that shall fall to us.”

I have a feeling that the next part is beyond anything you can imagine.