After the dream has gone.
Rosalyn Carter (wife of President Jimmy Carter) wrote: “If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, then we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.”
I found this quote incredibly profound, and have been reflecting upon it for the past 24 hours or so. It addresses the question of what you do after the dream has gone. Is there life after disappointment? Is there life after fulfillment?
What happens when life doesn’t go the way you hoped? With the relationship that didn’t work out, the career that didn’t materialize, the child that never came? I’ve often had a one track mind with destiny; I knew what I was going for, felt called to and that was it. Life teaches me that my journey is far more textured than that. It requires more flexibility to go with the twists and turns that inevitably come my way. I have to admit, that’s not a natural thing for me. Some of that is just my personality. Some of it is that sometimes, if I feel God’s in something, my dreams become my plans, my ideas become my rights. He’s my God, so why is this happening to me? And I have to remind myself that a relationship with God is not a slot machine where you pop a prayer to get the desired outcome. He’s not my Horoscope in the back of a magazine where I am told what is meant to be and all I have to do is sit and let it happen. Life, people, me – we’re all way more messy than that.
So what do we do after the dream has gone? The thing that challenged me in Rosalyn Carter’s words is that she had the integrity to admit that dreams do die, and they don’t come back. Sometimes it really is over – though I can’t count how many times I have pushed and fought for a dream gone sour….Still she says we must take the best of the old if possible, or even find a new dream. We know that’s not an easy process. There is grieving when a dream dies, sorrow, anger, confusion. But her words suggest that there’s hope, there’s life beyond the death of a dream, that we can choose to dream again, rather than live in a cynical no man’s land defined by disappointment, confusion and frustration.
I used to think the most faith filled thing was to hold on to the dream. Fight for it in our hearts with all we have. Never let it go, never let it die. These days I think, after the dream has gone, the most faith filled, courageous thing we can do is to admit it. Then let go of the dream and cling with all we have left to Jesus. And then, possibly the scariest step of all – begin to move on into the future. Because where our faith is concerned, death is not the end, it is the start of new life.
“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die” John 11:25
More on this next week in Part 2…
