Letting Go of My Dream

Photo by Mia Alves

I guess I’ve finally reached the age where I’ve come to realize that my dream must go. Sometimes the dream we hold is too unrealistic for our lives or circumstances. With all that is truly important in the world, is my dream that high up on the list?

As a believer and as a pastor, I’ve seen lots of unrealistic dreams die. I guess I just never figured mine was that far out that I wouldn’t get to realize it. I suppose it wasn’t a unique dream either. Others perhaps had the same one, or at least a similar dream.

I guess the hard part for me is that I worked so hard toward it. The writing, the publishing, the studying of the craft. I should be happy that I completed two books. Albeit one was a dissertation which no one, including me, would want to read.

But the other is a word for the church. It is a word that could have set so many into a new place in their walk with the Lord. And I know he gave the word to me. He supplied the illumination, stamina, resources, and encouragement to see it through to the end. But in the end, I’ll leave that dream in his hands too.

I am through dreaming. My mind and heart are planted in reality–and that reality is complete Mystery. It’s waiting on God. Being still to know that He is God. It is “I must become less and less; He must become more and more.”

The Dream?

Oh, I know you’ll think it’s foolish. Silly to be so discouraged over such a dream.

But it was a beautiful dream to me. A year of writing in a little cottage by the sea. In a small town, like Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard (only that place is too expensive). Only a place the tourists haven’t found yet. Maybe Swan Island instead. A year with no financial weights, no other responsibilities except to read, write, and paint.

Writing in the morning. My laptop on my lap in a stuffed chair. Marcy writing in the next room or at the kitchen table. Then lunch in a small cafe over the news paper. Reading or painting in the afternoon. Walk on the beach. Sip coffee in the cafe and sketch out an outline or plot. Then a couple of early evening hours with Marcy and friends playing “name that tune.” Go to bed with the windows open to the sound of the rocky surf and halyards clanking against their masts in the distant harbor. Perhaps a fog horn or buoy-bell to stir me from my sleep only to drift off til morning.

Then rising early to write again. Finish the memoir. Finish the collection of poems. Finish “Hannah’s Table and Other stories” and perhaps shoot off a couple of feature articles for my favorite magazines and editors.

But . . . who knows what the New Earth will be like. Maybe that’s an exact picture of what I’ll live out beyond the end of this mystery of life. It will only take me a little while and I’ll adjust and be content to let the dream slip away. My mourning will evolve into new hope for something more real. I’m willing for the “letting go” to be an offering to Love. And another embrace of the Cross.

After all . . . it was my lesser dream. My greatest Dream awaits the Resurrection and the soon-return of my King.

Filed under: Consider It, ON THE JOURNEY, REFLECTIONS