Dreaming in Disneyland : God, Your Dreams, and Magic

What do VeggieTales, Troy and Gabriella, Ariel, Little Women, Disneyland, my dreams, and my relationship with God have in common? Actually, a lot. ​

I’m a thinker, I tend to think a lot, and lately, I’ve been thinking about my dreams, creativity, and God and his plan for my life.
    
​I started a few months ago when I read a life-changing book called Me, Myself, and Bob. It’s a memoir by the founder of VeggieTales, Phil Vischer. The book talks about his life, his experience creating the first direct-to-DVD computer-animated show, and then the eventual fall of his company.

VeggieTales: God Over Your Dreams

The book was enjoyable, funny, beautiful, and profound for several reasons but here is the main thing that stuck out to me. Phil’s animation company, Big Idea was going bankrupt, he was in the middle of cutting down production and laying off employees, and he was having a really hard time. You see, in his mind, God had given him the dream of creating kids shows that counteracted all of the evil in the world. Creating these films was his way of serving and praising God.
    
As Phil officially closed his company down, one of his employees went to him with a prophetic message. What she said went something like this, “This isn’t about God and Big Idea, this is about God and Phil.” This hit Phil hard, he realized that all along he thought he was serving God, but he actually didn't know God as well as he could have.
    
Let me rephrase this to apply to you and me. “Maybe God doesn't care about you and your dreams that are meant to serve him, maybe he cares more about you and him.”
  
 In the Bible, we read that there is nothing we can do to please God, yet so often we find ourselves working so hard to create things that serve God, instead of just giving God our hearts. 
If we didn't do anything to serve God, just having a relationship with him would be enough. All God wants is to have a relationship with each of his children. Yes, it’s good to serve him, but that shouldn’t take the place of our personal relationships with him.
    
This hit me deeply. It needs to be about me and God, not about God and my stories, God and my art. It’s about God and my heart. No matter how good and important my dreams are, a relationship with God is infinitely more important. 
  
Very often our dreams come at the cost of relationships with others and God. And at the end of the day, all of these relationships are so much more important. They need to be first, not second to our dreams and creative passions.

Troy and Gabriella - Relationships Trumping Dreams

This is where Troy and Gabriella come in. I’m a big High School Musical fan, a group of friends and I recently re-watched the whole series. And yes, they’re pretty cheesy, but there is something so profound about them. Yeah, they portray a highly idealized high school, yeah their problems really aren’t that bad, but High School Musical is the perfect example of what I’m talking about, about dreams coming in conflict with relationships and having to choose between the two.

In the first High School Musical movie, the two main characters, Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez meet at a New Years Eve party and are randomly paired to sing karaoke together. Both of these kids are really talented singers, but both have based their lives around different dreams.

Through a course of events, they end up at the same high school. Both Troy and Gabriella are faced with the challenge of redefining their dreams and dealing with the consequences. If either of them decide to pursue singing, they lose their other friends, but if they abandon it, they will lose each other.

​Eventually, they realize that they have to bring all of their friends together and their friends (who tried to split them up) realize that they have to respect each other's dreams. But ultimately, the end of the movie isn’t about the characters pursuing their dreams, it’s about everyone being friends. 

The second High School Musical movie is even more poignant. It’s about Troy being presented with all of these amazing opportunities for his future, including a spot on his dream school’s basketball team. But as he pursues these dreams, he pushes away Gabriella, and his other friends.

Ultimately Troy is faced with the decision of what’s more important to him, his dreams, or these relationships he has forged. Although the plot itself seems silly (college is probably more realistically important than having a fun summer), it can be easily related to our dreams and creative lives.

​Are we willing to give up our relationships with the people in our lives, and our relationship with God just to get a leg up in life? I don’t know about you, but I’m with Troy, the relationships are infinitely more important.
    
The third movie touches on this topic too, but I don’t think it’s important for me to hash it out again.
    
​You see what Troy and Gabriella, and the whole HSM gang teach me is this, yeah our dreams are beautiful and important, our talents are valuable, but the people we share life with are infinitely more important and we need to prioritize them and take them along with us on our dreams. 

Little Women - Leaving Dreams Behind

This theme of leaving dreams behind in favor of relationships is reflected in another story I love. In the second part of Little Women, Jo leaves her home in Massachusetts to live in New York City. She is there to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer; the close proximity to publishing houses, and the change of pace being what she thinks she needs to simultaneously forget Laurie and launch her career. 

She makes friends with Professor Bhaer but he gives her feedback on her writing that she doesn’t appreciate. What he said to her was true, but she was embarrassed, embarrassed to be producing mediocre writing in the name of money. Suddenly, she gets a telegram telling her that her sister Beth isn’t doing well, so she realizes that she needs to drop her dreams and head home to help her sister.
    
After Beth passes, Jo spends a lot of time contemplating her writing, and finds that from the deep well of sorrow, she is able to write things that are so much more beautiful because she found herself in a dark place. She also had time to really consider her dreams, and through the loss of an important person in her life, she realizes that her dreams of being a world famous writer weren’t as important as she thought they were.
    
​Being faithful with the gifts God gave her was so much more important than writing to sell.

Ariel - The Dreams God Gives Are Greater

Like I said earlier, God cares more about us than our dreams, and we need to care more about God than our dreams. We also need to take time to serve others in the body of Christ, and feed healthy relationships. The beautiful thing is that when we do this, we enhance our creative work as well.
    
​God cares about you, and your dreams. I don’t want to say that God doesn't care about your dreams, because he really does, and when we submit to him, he will guide us as well. This is something else I’ve picked up from a book I’ve been reading. That book is called Part of  My World and it’s by Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

Jodi is a Christian and her story is so beautiful. In her life, when she was at her lowest points, when nothing was working out in her marriage or career, God gave her opportunities. God used her to voice one of the most iconic characters of all time, and gave her a platform to share her faith with so many people. This dream wasn’t something that Jodi could've made happen on her own, it only happened because she was trusting God with her life. Very often, God leads us to greater things than we could ever imagine if we just trust him! That’s the reward for cultivating a relationship with God.

Dreaming in Disneyland

This brings us to Disneyland. Jodi Benson starred in the musical Smile, Howard Ashman wrote a beautiful and poignant song that Jodi’s character sang called Disneyland. The character in Smile who sings this song has the silly dream of wanting to live in Disneyland. Why? Disneyland is the place of dreams, Disneyland is the place where this character can go to escape all the hardships she has faced in her life.

I haven’t ever been to Disneyland, but I have been to Disney World (I’m an East Coast girl). Disney World was the place where I felt free and hopeful. When I was in Disney World, anything and everything was possible. Through many hard days in my life, I would close my eyes and imagine that I was back in Disney. Cinderella’s castle in the Magic Kingdom towing over me, wandering through quaint little corners that transform humid Orlando Florida into fairytale villages. 

Disneyland is a place where we can forget our sorrows, Disneyland is the place where so many of our dreams were first formed. 
    
Phil Vischer felt this, after the collapse of his company, he found himself in Disneyland, staring at the statue of Walt and Mickey, wondering what the difference between Phil and Walt was. They both dreamed, yet one failed and the other succeed. Phil felt broken and lost. But there, at Disneyland, in the land of dreams, he found that Jesus was all he had ever needed, not Jesus and his dreams, not Jesus and the Christian version of Disneyland (there was a VeggieTales theme park in the works), but just Jesus. 
Someone had told Phil that God had given them a vision of Phil as a little boy, on the shoulders of Jesus in Disneyland having the best time. When Phil was first in Disneyland, he didn't feel that, but when he left, he found a new spring in his step - he was riding on Jesus’ shoulders, having the best time. 

(photo credit - ear to there travel)

Jodi Benson was given the keys to Disneyland after the opening night of her show Smile, and little did she know that a few years later, she would play a Disney Icon. All of that was great, but even more than that, she realized that what God had given her was greater than even the keys to Disneyland. A life filled with his blessings because she chose to follow him.
    
I say all of this to remind us, to remind us that even though dreams have value, we need to lean on Jesus more than anything else in the world. We need to value the people in our lives and we need to live with love. 
But I also want to remind you of this, every dream can happen, especially if we lean on Jesus. It may not be easy, there may be lots of hard work and ups and downs, but if we depend on Jesus for our strength we will get there. Our dreams may not always be so magical, sometimes we have to weigh the cost, and I think it is more valuable to leave your dream on the side than to lose the relationships that mean the most to you.

But through all of it, even though we may realize that our dreams, like Disneyland, are made up of gears and recorded songs, elbow grease and failures, they can be beautiful, they can remind someone of the beauty that is still to be found in life. And our dreams, the dreams that we pursued walking alongside by side with Jesus, can lead others to him as well.
    
"Have faith in your dreams and someday, your rainbow will come shining through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true.” -from Disney’s Cinderella

Belle Thomas

​Belle is the writer and dreamer behind An Old Fashioned Girl. She is passionate about reminding girls of their identity in Christ, classic books, history, Louisa May Alcott, and earl grey tea.