Letting God Resurrect Your Dream

Do you remember when dreams were so exciting, absorbing, exhilarating? Did you ever have a time where that was the case?

I did. Now five years ago, I had my talent, my dreams, my vague plans. There were so many possibilities, and I was getting there.

Finally after three years of such planning and working, a fraction of my dream really fell into my lap. The distant dream got just a little closer, and real things seemed to finally be happening.

Then two things happened. My health plummeted--my mind was robbed of its clarity, my limbs of energy, and my lungs of oxygen. Something that was so natural to me became out of my capability to accomplish as I once could. And second, the one that had instigated the dream coming closer wasn’t okay with that and the things my disappearing health took from me, or rather, according to them, the fact that I was letting my health take these things from me. And as it turned out, that instigator had no more access to dream-fulfilling than I did on my own.

Let’s just say that dream was burned. So deeply, so painfully, unlike anything else I have ever experienced that was caused by another human being. To the point that everything associated with that dream was then associated with that dream-burner, and the heart of me, my deepest passion, was seemingly permanently singed. Singed with the fire of lies and hurt and the sick-stomach tension that always re-arises at the memory of any traumatic experience.

So the dream died, the fuel behind the dream died, and the only remnant of it was the sheer talent that drove me to it in the first place. But even that was unavoidably buried deep, deep down in an attempt to heal from the pain.

It seems like since then, through my illnesses, and then through the dying of the dream, I became so much older, life became so much more serious, and the excitement that dreams are made of—the all-encompassing thrill of that dream and my passion for it—became a thing of a child’s past that perhaps should remain there.

So what do you do then? When your highest goal in life, the thing you love and plan for and work on for years is suddenly so tainted, you feel sickened even thinking of it? The thing that you know God made you to do becomes the single most painful thing you’ve ever experienced, something you can’t even handle thinking about, much less do?

All I know: you wait. You try to breathe. You let yourself cry and be mad and hurt and cry. And you trust that this thing about time healing all wounds might possibly be true.

And you also realize two things: first, that wolves in sheep’s clothing, liars, and backstabbers are really out there. They are exactly how they’re described, in flesh and blood, seeming to be one wonderful thing and then finally proving that they are the absolute, hideous opposite. And second, you realize that life is far too short and gifts far too precious to let those wolves in sheep’s clothing keep you from doing what God put you on this earth to do.

Pain has a way of aging you—especially emotionally. And dampening the joy of gifts and the excitement of possibilities. But I can only assume that’s what the devil wants: the pain of life as a human and the hurt inflicted by those allowing themselves to be used by him to rob us of our joy—both everyday joy in life itself and the joy of fulfilling our God-given gifts and desires.

So we have to let God heal us from the deep wounds others have inflicted on us, let Him wash our minds and hearts of the memories of the lies and the hurt and the sick-stomach feeling blackening everything associated with our dream. Let Him enable us to accomplish His will for us even through our weakness. And let Him transform us back to where we were, when our passion was as constant as our heartbeat, our possibilities were beautiful, and our dream was very alive.

Because if He gave the dream to us, the last thing He's going to do is let the enemy win.

P.S. Linking up with Thinking Out Loud, Little Friday, the April Blog Challenge, Be.You.Tiful Link Party, and My Favorite Posts Link Up.