Dreams die
I've been really privileged. My life so far has been basically good. Every adventure, when it has come to an end, has led into a new adventure. Sometimes I haven't known what it coming next, but each time, when it comes round, it has turned out to be something really good. Something new, fresh and exciting. Something really worthwhile.
Through the last couple years when things have been really tough, my job has been brilliant. It's like God has ringfenced it with a wall of protection, and even on days when I can manage nothing outside work, when I can't speak without crying, somehow I've still been able to do my work, do it and do it fairly well and even enjoy it. Even in the darkness, things have worked out for me.
I have a lot of dreams. I have dozens of interests and bucketloads of ideas, and I'm constantly being distracted from one thing by a new, shiny possibility elsewhere. But the dreams I am distracted from aren't left behind; they are filed, labelled carefully, shelved to bring out another day. I might be more tempted to give up on them if it weren't for the fact that every so often, an old dream is fulfilled. Like the day I played my first (and thus far, only) cricket match, for Oxford University; playing cricket is a dream that was born when I was probably only 13 or so, visiting a cricket pitch where my grandfather once played.
My creative projects - sewing, writing and otherwise - illustrate this beautifully. The last project I finished was a crochet bobble hat, which I began making 3 winters ago; and which I began again and again, unravelling it each time I decided it wouldn't be quite right. My current writing project is one I began several years ago as well; long enough ago that I don't actually remember when it was. I still have my first ever cross-stitch sampler, half-finished from when I started it most likely before I was ten, and I wouldn't have kept it if I didn't stubbornly believe I might yet finish it.
Not surprisingly, this has made me someone who finds hope easy, who can see the possible ways that something (nearly) impossible can be achieved. I'd like to start my own business one day. As long as I'm well, I don't find the prospect intimidating, but exciting. I stubbornly cling to my love of drama and promise myself I'll go back on stage, despite the fact that I really don't have the skills; I believe I can learn. Those are just a couple of samples of the things I want to try, that I am confident I could achieve as long as I put in the hard work.
But all of this optimism leaves me with no scope to let dreams die.
I can't do everything. Obviously I can't do everything! But I'm still youthfully convinced that I can do anything. It's tragic to me that there is not the time in all the years ahead of me on earth to try all the things I want to try, and I find myself wondering if Heaven is a place where you can casually take a year out to trek the walls of Jerusalem or learn to play the harp, because then I could tick those things off my mental list.
I had to give up a dream last summer. It was a dream that I had grown very fond of; one that I had poured much into, and at a time when I had very little to give. I had brought my time, money, energy, emotions to lay at the feet of this dream, to feed it, to give it a chance to grow. Like I've just said, I had to give up the dream; but the dream didn't just die. It didn't go away. It sneaked into my filing system, not somewhere among the weekend trips to Paris and the open mic nights, but among the hefty, purposeful dreams where my degree used to go until I got a real one, where any future kids I might have lie sleeping, where my long-dreamed-of first novel clings on despite the years and where world poverty is ended. And I am guilty too; because when I saw that the dream did not die, I continued to feed it. Wee tidbits of possibility, stories of success despite the odds, the infinite improbability drive of my own stubborness. Despite the fact that the dream was over, it did not die, and I do not know how to give it up.
The thing about giving things up, though, is that afterwards they don't belong to you anymore and you have no rights to them any longer. Sometimes, as in this case, they belong to another person. I serve a God of resurrection, and sometimes He gives back dreams that have died already; but that has not happened for me, rather, I have not allowed it to die.
Today that dream received another death blow. It was not the first, and I am afraid I do not think it will be the last. That dream died again today; and I am afraid that my childish optimism will blow back some trickle of false hope into its misused corpse, a chance not to live but merely to die again later.
People are forced to give up dreams all the time, give them up absolutely with no glimmer of hope. Dreams that have had the chance to grow much bigger than mine ever did. Anywhere, for instance, where death (this time I mean physical death) is involved. As a Christian I believe things about what happens after death, and about how God can turn around a life, which I'm not going into here; but even with that sort of hope, a dream is dead when someone's fiance dies before their wedding day, or when a woman learns that the child she carries won't make it to full term.
I am one who has not had to do this; my dreams, big or small, have stayed alive and well. For the first time, I need to actually, genuinely let this one go. Dreams die; but I haven't yet learnt how.
Through the last couple years when things have been really tough, my job has been brilliant. It's like God has ringfenced it with a wall of protection, and even on days when I can manage nothing outside work, when I can't speak without crying, somehow I've still been able to do my work, do it and do it fairly well and even enjoy it. Even in the darkness, things have worked out for me.
I have a lot of dreams. I have dozens of interests and bucketloads of ideas, and I'm constantly being distracted from one thing by a new, shiny possibility elsewhere. But the dreams I am distracted from aren't left behind; they are filed, labelled carefully, shelved to bring out another day. I might be more tempted to give up on them if it weren't for the fact that every so often, an old dream is fulfilled. Like the day I played my first (and thus far, only) cricket match, for Oxford University; playing cricket is a dream that was born when I was probably only 13 or so, visiting a cricket pitch where my grandfather once played.
My creative projects - sewing, writing and otherwise - illustrate this beautifully. The last project I finished was a crochet bobble hat, which I began making 3 winters ago; and which I began again and again, unravelling it each time I decided it wouldn't be quite right. My current writing project is one I began several years ago as well; long enough ago that I don't actually remember when it was. I still have my first ever cross-stitch sampler, half-finished from when I started it most likely before I was ten, and I wouldn't have kept it if I didn't stubbornly believe I might yet finish it.
Not surprisingly, this has made me someone who finds hope easy, who can see the possible ways that something (nearly) impossible can be achieved. I'd like to start my own business one day. As long as I'm well, I don't find the prospect intimidating, but exciting. I stubbornly cling to my love of drama and promise myself I'll go back on stage, despite the fact that I really don't have the skills; I believe I can learn. Those are just a couple of samples of the things I want to try, that I am confident I could achieve as long as I put in the hard work.
But all of this optimism leaves me with no scope to let dreams die.
I can't do everything. Obviously I can't do everything! But I'm still youthfully convinced that I can do anything. It's tragic to me that there is not the time in all the years ahead of me on earth to try all the things I want to try, and I find myself wondering if Heaven is a place where you can casually take a year out to trek the walls of Jerusalem or learn to play the harp, because then I could tick those things off my mental list.
I had to give up a dream last summer. It was a dream that I had grown very fond of; one that I had poured much into, and at a time when I had very little to give. I had brought my time, money, energy, emotions to lay at the feet of this dream, to feed it, to give it a chance to grow. Like I've just said, I had to give up the dream; but the dream didn't just die. It didn't go away. It sneaked into my filing system, not somewhere among the weekend trips to Paris and the open mic nights, but among the hefty, purposeful dreams where my degree used to go until I got a real one, where any future kids I might have lie sleeping, where my long-dreamed-of first novel clings on despite the years and where world poverty is ended. And I am guilty too; because when I saw that the dream did not die, I continued to feed it. Wee tidbits of possibility, stories of success despite the odds, the infinite improbability drive of my own stubborness. Despite the fact that the dream was over, it did not die, and I do not know how to give it up.
The thing about giving things up, though, is that afterwards they don't belong to you anymore and you have no rights to them any longer. Sometimes, as in this case, they belong to another person. I serve a God of resurrection, and sometimes He gives back dreams that have died already; but that has not happened for me, rather, I have not allowed it to die.
Today that dream received another death blow. It was not the first, and I am afraid I do not think it will be the last. That dream died again today; and I am afraid that my childish optimism will blow back some trickle of false hope into its misused corpse, a chance not to live but merely to die again later.
People are forced to give up dreams all the time, give them up absolutely with no glimmer of hope. Dreams that have had the chance to grow much bigger than mine ever did. Anywhere, for instance, where death (this time I mean physical death) is involved. As a Christian I believe things about what happens after death, and about how God can turn around a life, which I'm not going into here; but even with that sort of hope, a dream is dead when someone's fiance dies before their wedding day, or when a woman learns that the child she carries won't make it to full term.
I am one who has not had to do this; my dreams, big or small, have stayed alive and well. For the first time, I need to actually, genuinely let this one go. Dreams die; but I haven't yet learnt how.
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