I love to sing. I always did. I also like to play guitar and often use it when I am in church. Making music was not straightforward for me though.

When I was a young child, I wanted to become a famous singer like the stars and I sang my heart out. However, my singing as a child was not very good as I often sang out of key. At least that is what my parents and siblings said.

It got even worse when my voice cracked. But I still loved to sing. So I started with learning to play the guitar.

Both my parents played guitar, and with time I learnt the first chords from my mum and strummed some songs playing by chords, not by notes like classical guitarists.

When you play by chords you have to sing along to make it sound like something. What helped me was to play guitar at summer camps where the whole group was singing along. Somehow I could sing correctly when others sang as well.

Part of the dream might come true

Over time my singing improved. My voice settled to a deep baritone bass, and our music teacher tried to get me into his school choir because he needed deep voices. As long as my friend Kurt sang next to me, it worked well, I kind of picked up the pitch from him and amplified it with my voice.

Kurt and I joined a church choir as well, and when I was in my last year of school I was able to sing the main solo voice in Telemann’s Schoolmaster Cantata and enjoyed it immensely.

I never became a famous singer as my childhood dream was. I know many people whose childhood dreams did not come true, who never became professional football players even though they played quite well, prima ballerinas, even though they danced so beautifully, or Hollywood stars, even though they could act so naturally.

Not every childhood dream comes true, and for every successful candidates in TV shows like America‘s Got Talent, there are hundreds who don’t even get past the first round.

The dreams are still important. My dream helped me to overcome the obstacles I had with singing, it gave me the energy to learn how to play guitar, and in the long run it helped me in my ministry. I am sure that those other dreams helped the dreamers as well even if not everything became true. Dancing is fun, and football teaches about team spirit, acting comes in handy when you have to speak in front of people.

What is God’s dream for your life?

Looking at my own history it seems to me that God had a dream for me, and my dream was just one step on my way to fulfil God’s dream. In Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) God says “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

It is part of a letter to the exiled from Jerusalem in Babylon. For them it must have looked as if all their dreams were scattered.

They were forced to leave their home country and had no idea whether they would ever come back home.

In this letter they were encouraged to make the best out of the situation: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.

“Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” And then the letter says that the exile will last 70 years, thus three generations at least.

Trusting God’s master plan

It is important to know that God has a plan, a dream for us. From the very beginning God wanted us to be part of his big plan.

Not all our actions might support the dream that God has. Humans can be quite stubborn and resistant.

However, we can trust that it does not matter what our past was, we can choose to grow new habits over time. We are not limited by our childhood dreams or experiences.

Sometimes, like in nature, we are able to grow in spurts. As we develop new habits and tweak our lifestyles with others together it will be possible to enjoy and accept the lives we were meant to live, even to change what tries to hold us back, the best we possibly can and practice contentment and acceptance of situations and people we cannot change, recognising that we can find peace and solace like in the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary United Methodist Church in Smith’s