Big Dreams
We all have big dreams at some point in our lives. We also pretty well know that life doesn’t always work out the way we wanted it to. Our plans are loose at best. Life is largely out of our control. But we also know the benefit of five and 10 year plans. That it’s wise to project out where we’re going, because without a goal or vision, we wander aimlessly. We are wired for direction.
But how many of us put the time and energy into creating those five and 10 year plans, just for the sake of having them? Not many I would guess. I certainly don’t. So what motivates us to plan? What motivates us to move?
Dreams.
No, I don’t mean the nonsensical, jumbled events that play out while we’re sleeping. I mean the dreams that make us excited about life, that make our souls come alive and our hearts happy. In a way, our dreams are fuel for life. We desperately want our dreams to come true. So much so that we will plan large portions of our lives, time, money, and energy to make them happen. We’ll spend a lifetime chasing them. That’s significant.
But as I mentioned before…sometimes life just doesn’t go the way we meant for it to. We get knocked off our dream-path. And sometimes, there’s just no getting back on. Lost dreams are heartbreaking.
Lost Dreams
Career
When I was nearing the end of high school and thinking about college, I wanted to go into nursing. But I wasn’t allowed to. For the longest time I thought of it as a mild disappointment. But several years later, my great-grandma, while we were talking about my college classes and plans moving forward, quietly said, “I always thought you’d be a nurse.” That’s when my heart broke over it.
When I majored in Communications, my degree was only a back-up plan. You know, in case I didn’t get married right away and needed to support myself. I decided to bank on that childhood dream of being a stay at home wife and mom. Needless to say, that wasn’t a good thing to depend on – at least that didn’t work out for me. So I started a full-time job in administration. That was supposed to be temporary. Just until….until what I didn’t know. But that’s what I kept telling myself.
Family
Three years later, I met Michael. Then we got married. I was a wife! And very happy to be so. But even though I knew going into marriage that Michael wasn’t going to be ready for kids for awhile, it was much harder to be okay with than I thought. I’ve always, always wanted kids and several of them! Everyone around us was having kids – our friends, basically every family at church, my sister. But I knew there would be no baby for me for several years. It became a lost dream for the moment and it was a stinging loss.
Meaningful Work
So the only thing left to chase was finding work that I loved and enjoyed. So I resigned my admin job. Finally I had the freedom to do something I dreamed of. I didn’t really know what that was anymore, but I knew it was NOT administration. This was my chance to figure out what that new thing was. But again, life had other plans. None of it worked out. I spent most of that year wandering…lost and confused…in depression, disappointment, and hopelessness. After a year out, I went right back into administration. Another lost dream.
No Dreams
The life I was living, though I didn’t have much to complain about, looked nothing like anything I dreamed about. Ever. And somewhere along the way, I stopped dreaming. I gave up. I was tired of the disappointment, tired of working towards things that kept being obliterated, tired of giving up my dreams.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like when you don’t have dreams to chase after. A little numb, sad. It’s not that there isn’t anything to live for (well, sometimes it feels that way), but life loses it’s luster. It’s hard to keep going day after day after day. There’s no motivation and no motivation to find motivation. At that point, a normal person might recognize that they need a dream to chase after, but for those of us with lost dreams, why would we want to dream some more?
Honestly, I’m not really sure what’s more disappointing. Dreams not coming to life or not dreaming at all. For a long time though, I didn’t really think about it. Not until I caught myself dreaming one night as I was trying to fall asleep.
I’m not really sure what’s more disappointing. Dreams not coming to life or not dreaming at all.
I was trying to think happy, lazy thoughts. Sleep doesn’t normally come quickly for me, so wandering thoughts are a normal part of my bedtime routine. On this particular night though, instead of mourning my lost dreams, I found myself feeling strangely happy and hopeful. Unintentionally, I’d started thinking of something that might be reality in the next five years. Strange…I don’t normally feel happy and hopeful about things in the future, not to mention in 5 years. But I did, and it felt foreign.
And that’s when I realized, I really had stopped dreaming.
Dreams = hope?
I was struck with a sadness of “this should not be.” Where was I going in life? And what would keep me going for the next 50 years? There was the temptation to once again conjure up my own dreams, but I knew that wasn’t going to work. What I had to realize was this:
We directly correlate dreams to hope. Dreams give us hope.
And while there is some truth to that, there’s also a subtle lie in it: “dreams are our hope.” In other words, we can’t have hope without (fulfilled) dreams. This is where I landed – wallowing in disappointment and hopelessness. Why?
Dreams can never and were never meant to be our hope. Yes, they spring up excitement and motivation and even joy, but not when our hope is misplaced.
Our only true source of hope is and was always meant to be Jesus. Jesus himself is our hope. Not the things he can do for us, not the the things we do for him – just him.
Jesus is radiant, he is beautiful, he is good, he is kind, he is loving. When we remain in him, his radiance, beauty, goodness, kindness, love overflows into our lives. And he is always with us, even to the very end of the age. That is hope. Hope that far outweighs lost dreams.
And when we look to Jesus as our hope, we will always have hope. When we no longer place our hope in ever-changing circumstances, we are finally free to dream.
New Dreams
So I stopped thinking of dreams as my motivator. As I started fixing my eyes on Jesus, the pressure to rely on dreams as my fuel for life gradually subsided. And new dreams were breathed into my heart. Some of them old dreams brought back to life – but not as I had dreamed them – as God had written them. Others were completely new dreams, things I would’ve never thought of, but that I am equally excited about.
When we no longer place our hope in ever-changing circumstances, we are finally free to dream.
I know that even these dreams won’t play out as I imagine them to, because I have only been given a glimpse of what they might be. But I know that God works beauty and purpose in our lives and if “my dreams” don’t pan out, it’s only because God has a bigger and better picture of what is to come.
Surrender to his perfect plan. Anticipate what is to come. Fix your eyes on Jesus and dream on…
