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PROGRAM D-8363
I’m looking at what you do when your dream dies. All of us, at some time or another, must go through the death of a dream. Recovery from that is a grieving process, and this process must be experienced. However, the great news is this: God can use it for marvelous growth in our lives if we allow him to.
Jesus told us this in John 12:24, “. . .unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24). Life comes from death, and you can find new life even from the death of a dream. I went through the painful death of a dream some years ago, and my journal reveals some of the lessons God taught me.
There were moments when I seemed to have a grip. At one point I wrote the following:
I want to learn that God is enough. Even if he doesn’t give me what my emotions say I need, I will trust him. I want to learn to love him more than anyone or anything else.
But there were other days when I really wanted to quit. On one of those days I wrote this:
In a sense the days get harder. I wonder and worry and fear. The impact of the loss is more obvious. The temptation to call it quits is ever present. Now, I’m learning to walk by faith. There is nothing good on the horizon. Everything looks bleak. I don’t feel God’s presence.
One of the surprises on this journey back was that I had to make daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes momentary decisions to stay on the road. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I came so close to giving up and going back into “control mode.” At various points during many days, I had to reconfirm my initial decision to let go and let God.
My faith was small, but it was growing. The phrase that I heard God say to me in that still small voice inside my head was, “Can’t you trust me?” At each of these subsequent decision points, as I would be ready to quit the fight, that question would ring in my head: “Can’t you trust me?” It was the beginning of learning that the most important thing I can ever do for God is to demonstrate to him that I trust him.
Are you in that place today—you’ve let go of the dream but the pain seems to intensify? God knows and understands and, believe me, he has good plans for you. Don’t give up; don’t lose heart. Run to God for refuge. He will see you through and bring beauty out of your ashes, I promise.