It All Starts with Your Dream

By Frederic Byda

I had the idea of writing this book in 2010. I was training for my first long-distance run, which was the Disney World Half Marathon. The race was in January 2011, and on one of my training runs in December of 2010, I was praying, and God spoke to me about writing a book. My first reaction was who would want to read something that I wrote and what would I write about? Eventually I left that thought far in the distance and continued with my life. Six years later, I picked that thought up again and began to write about my life experiences. I had met numerous people who were just existing and were not truly living because they were working at a job that wasn't fulfilling their God-given desires. Everyone has a purpose, and everyone's life has a purpose. We just need to find out what that purpose is and then pursue it with everything we have. Part of what I discovered along the way was many of these people had a desire burning inside of them when they were little children. There was something that they enjoyed doing and could do better than anyone else. It may have been painting or writing poetry or some other skillset that God had gifted to them. Along the journey of their own life, someone discouraged them and told them that what they were pursuing was a waste of time and they wouldn't amount to anything if they went that direction. Others were steered off their course by life circumstances. They may have found a job where they found worldly success and brought them all the trappings, such as the nice house, car, vacations, etc., but they hated the thought of going to work because the work itself didn't bring them joy. This book was borne out of those stories and others that will hopefully serve as encouragement to those who find themselves in that spot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098012915

Book preview

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It All Starts with Your Dream

Frederic Byda Jr.

Copyright © 2019 by Frederic Byda Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 1

Uncovering Your Dream

To dream big is a matter of choice. To reach that dream is a matter of discipline.

In March of 2010, I suffered a traumatic experience that forever altered the way I will look at the world and created in me what was coined as a new normal. I had spent the previous five years married to a woman whose child I was helping to raise and loved as my own. We tragically lost our little girl after over five years’ battle with a beast known as neuroblastoma. That beautiful little soul’s name was Hannah. She taught me many valuable lessons through her short life, which I still carry with me today. I spent several months on my own, trying to figure out the pain of what I had just experienced, trying to deal with it on a logical level, which I later realized was futile. What I was experiencing was hitting me on an emotional level, and to deal with it on a logical one made as much sense as a screen door on a submarine. My emotions were swirling, and I was having trouble holding all my worlds together. My refusal to deal with the trauma associated with the pain of loss began to affect my work, marriage, and personal and social commitments; and the combination was beginning to take a toll on my emotional well-being.

Everything came to a head several months after Hannah had passed. I finally had to acknowledge the insanity my life had become and admit that I needed help. Once I was honestly able to admit that everything I had tried to make the pain go away had failed, then was I ready for the healing to begin. A quote by Zig Ziglar says, If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you. I was ready, and I would do whatever it took to move forward.

What is my dream? That was the question I asked myself, which launched a search that changed the course of my life, and when you dare to ask and honestly answer that question, it will change yours also. To begin to answer that question and the ones that followed, I will need to give a little background of what brought me to that point.

I am a man of faith, and it was this faith in an almighty God that opened the door for a friend to reach out and offer help. She and her husband had experience healing through a program that was offered at my church, and it was called Celebrate Recovery. It was through this program that I learned about words like trauma and heartache which were shared alongside words such as hope and authenticity. I allowed myself to be authentic and vulnerable, maybe for the first time in my life. Others encouraged me to follow through what I had begun and to see it all the way through to completion.

Being authentic was a double-edged sword. It allowed me to have honest conversations, but it exposed many deep hurts. It was like pouring gasoline on the fire that my emotional life had become. The positive side of pouring the gasoline is that once the fuel is burned up, the fire will extinguish itself.

Two years into the program and I had become a leader and was using the gifts and talents I had been given to help others as I had been helped. It was here that I realized how much I enjoyed helping others, and it was journeying through this program where I began to feel the desire to write a book. At the time, however, I didn’t know when I would begin or what the topic would be. Inspiration, experience, and timing all contributed to stepping out of my comfort zone. I began to use what I had learned along my journey to help others walk through their own journey and discover their purpose as I had discovered mine. I now had a direction for my next phase, but there were still a few more things that I needed to learn to get to the next step.

Knowing the right direction to walk makes reaching the destination a matter of endurance and persistence. My thoughts transitioned from if I would to when I would. That would become how I would encourage myself to lean in and press forward when the times became difficult. The next three years were spent using what I had learned and what changed me to pour into the lives of others. An opportunity opened