Dreams

“There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream - whatever that dream might be.” - Pearl S. Buck

Everybody has a dream. What’s your dream? What was your dream when you were young and full of dreams? Have the hardships and disappointments of life taken away that dream?

Sometimes when adversity happens, it feels as though everything meaningful in our life has come falling down around us. Our instinct is to run, to hide from the pain of fallen dreams, from the thunder as our well-made plans begin crashing into pieces like shattered glass at our feet.

The crash of a fallen dream is always accompanied by the sound of a breaking heart. We put so much of ourselves and our hearts into our dreams. We build our lives and plan our activities around our dreams. No matter where we are in life, our eyes are fixed on the fulfillment of the dreams we long to see realized. Our dreams are built of those things we desire at the deepest level of our beings – whether it be the birth of a long-awaited child, a happy marriage, a hard-won career, the happiness of our grown children or grandchildren, wealth or prestige in our community - but whatever they may be, our dreams are what we believe will bring us our highest joy.

We plan, we work, we dream. But life does not always obey our well-laid plans. One day life steps in and destiny reroutes our dreams. Suddenly we are faced with the reality that the dream we have invested in for so long can never be.

What now? Where to now? Our hearts ask of us, now that the perfectly laid plans have turned to ashes. What do I do now?

Heartbroken with the loss of what we have so long believed in, we sometimes fail to realize that perhaps destiny has a better plan for us that we could not see through the forest of our dreams. Perhaps if we look close enough, we will see that, though the dreams we so carefully cultivated and nurtured have fallen to pieces around us, there is now a clearing through which a new plan, a new dream is emerging.

We must learn to be flexible, we must learn to adapt quickly because life seldom plays out as we imagined it would. Destiny’s higher wisdom always intervenes if we veer too far off the path to which our real selves have been called. It calls us back, moving whatever is necessary in order to make the way clear to who we are truly supposed to become.

Life’s tragedies, broken dreams and fallen idols are all are signs pointing us to our true destiny. Destinies we would otherwise have missed because we couldn’t see our true destiny for the dreams that got in the way

"When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum." - Author Unknown

Excerpted from Sidewalk Flowers, Vol. 1

Copyright © Glynda Lomax