What To Do When Dreams are Dead

Creating Something out of Nothing

Long ago, nestled in a small 1920’s cape cod in the heart of Virginia,
there was a couple who desired a baby.

They had been married five years and were bursting with joy at the thought of adding on, a life to their already full lives.
Enough motherly and fatherly love and practice had been poured out dotingly on their energetic sweet pug and now was the moment of seriousness.
The timing chosen,
dreams dreamed,
plans planned,
they watched and they waited…
yet no baby came.
Close to the year mark of this hopeful venture,
which had turned to worrying and wondering,
they finally clutched in hand
the coveted pink dash in the ivory plastic pen for which they’d been longing.
Of course, they were ever so delighted in the revelation…
but the joy was not to last.
In a few short weeks,
they were to discover the life they found so promising
had slipped away in the night. 

I still remember that evening, etched in my memory, engravings on a marked tombstone that’s weathered the decades.

Laying in the sheer, still, dark of the night…
breathe in, heart aching, breathe out, heart breaking…
tears unceasing, flowing from that cistern of a broken heart.

Mind reeling, unbelieving, I reach out my hands –
I grasp at the water gushing so freely from that cistern –
and, hard as I try, I cannot hold it.

And that is exactly how it felt.

Arms cupped, fighting to hold that life water as it slowly ebbed away between my clutched fingers.

Completely helpless.

Utterly hopeless.

We live, we breath, we move on…we cling to one another, we hold on to the life we do have.

Being the pug lovers we are, we forged on ahead, trying again, hoping again, making the best use of our days as we continued to love on our Lady Pug, a delightful bringer of happiness – our own sweet furry “baby.”

But another storm was to come.

Just days after celebrating Lady Pug’s first birthday, she suffered a severe reaction from a vaccination. She, who started that morning happy and brimming with life, was devoid of life that evening, buried by my husband in the backyard with her favorite pink stuffed teddy bear.  

It’s painful even now as I write it, many years later. I remember the shock, that utterly helpless feeling again of trying to cup the life water I just could not hold. I remember asking, Who’s next, Lord? Some of our greatest loves, our cherished hopes and dreams, were being ripped out from our very hearts.

Even now, I don’t know why it had to be that way.

As I look back upon my earlier years, I see the gamut of perished dreams, ranging from less crucial to agonizingly painful.

For the lesser ones, I’m amazed (and ashamed) at all the ships God allowed me to sink. I had quite the fleet of failures to my name, none of which I’m proud to admit.

Though looking back upon the past can sometimes produce 20/20 spectacles, it can be challenging to make sense of the ending of a dream in the moment. Especially if the desire was seemingly good, for His name, even given by Him.

The loss of a baby…

a relationship shattered…

a ministry broken apart...

How to make sense of these?

Being under the strong caring wing of God’s sovereignty requires a certain ache of trust in these tragic moments. It’s difficult to look at our circumstances and not have understanding, not have answers. I can view my past and make sense of some of it, but others, I can think,

Why on earth?
Why that far?
Why did it have to be that?

This side of eternity, it may never make sense. That’s when we rely on our Father God and his sovereign, wise care…and we trust in His sovereign, good plan. 

We don’t make sense of it, we can’t make sense of it…but we trust.

When we suffer the death of a dream, what was once there is now gone.

The relationship, the story, the person, the plan, materialized before us, vanishes.

We’re left with empty void.

We reach out our hands to cup what once was, and we grasp nothing…fluid through our fingers, a delight disappeared.

Our soul wrenches in the agony of this, because we know exactly what we can do with nothing – NOTHING. We can do nothing with nothing. Right?

We have no power to create something out of nothing. Everything we ever created had to come from something first. 

There’s only One who could possibly create something out of nothing…
He’s done it before.
And He continues to do it…
in our lives.

Out of nothing, He called everything into existence at the beginning of time. Seven days and the world was made. Fast forward the years, the centuries, feel your finger slip over the sheer pages of scripture as you soak in those stories of

Abraham and Sarah
sacrificing Isaac
Hannah’s barrenness
Joseph sold into slavery,
wrongly accused,
and seemingly forgotten
Elizabeth
Lazarus
the list goes on

Fast forward to you…if you’re a believer, then you came from “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10) with “righteous deeds…like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6).

Yet, in the midst of that dismal state, God breathed salvation in you, in me, who lacked a foundation of anything good.

The breath of life.

And the angels rejoiced at a soul claimed for the Kingdom. God bringing something forth out of a seemingly hopeless “nothing” situation. 

…we are free to rely on God when our hope for a relationship or a situation has dwindled to nothing. Remember, our Creator-God specializes in bringing something from nothing. 

-Jen Wilkins, None Like Him (emphasis mine)

Our situation did not stay that way. Hearts can heal over time, as the distance between pain and present widens. Eventually, I did get pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy –

one who wouldn’t exist, had I never suffered through the pain of losing the first, tragic as it was.

That excruciating season of death ended and a season of life began.

Four littles now grace our midst (a couple not so little anymore!) with one more on the way.

And we have enough fur trapped in nooks and crannies of our house to build a whole other pug dog (pugs are notoriously huge shedders, if you didn’t know – and we have double the dander with two). 

I don’t know what life would be like, had those two precious lives not been lost…but I rejoice in what He did bring us.

I cannot fathom the why, but I trust the plan.

More specifically, I trust the One who makes the plans.

I trust my sinful, tedious heart, always in need of growth and sanctification, had something to learn in those dark days.

I see how the sufferings of death have borne in me a compassion for others who are walking a similar, heavy road. I know the One who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4).

I carry away the richness of His blessings after the sorrows in the storm.

If you’ve found yourself in the midst of a shattered, dead dream with nothing to make of it, let your trust in God heal your broken heart.

His working may be something you never dreamed or imagined. Something completely different than how you saw it in your mind.

Whether your greatest desire comes to pass or God chooses to use the circumstance to refine your heart and lead you down a different road –

God, the ultimate Creator, will intervene in your life to bring something out of nothing. 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. However, I will only ever recommend products I love and truly believe will bring you value!

For more on how He brings something out of nothing, take a look at Jen Wilkin’s None Like Him. I read this in a ladies Bible study group and loved learning His different attributes – the “something out of nothing” chapter was my favorite! It’s available on Amazon.