Dreams

I have dreams. All kinds of dreams.

Sometimes my dreams are ethereal.  Sometimes they are too real.

Often my dreams are easily forgotten in the light of day.

And then there are dreams from which I don't want to awake.

I also have God-sized dreams, as Holley Gerth calls them.

This was to be my summer of dreams accomplished.  Someone else had other ideas, and those dreams didn't happen.  Someone else is my God.  He has taken me to a place called Patience.  The road hasn't been paved with gold or diamonds.  The surface I've traveled has been filled with potholes and bumps.  I haven't been a happy camper all along this road, battling surgery, pain, other unexpected health issues.

Then last night I was on Facebook for the first time in several days.  I'd been thinking of a young friend in her 30s whom I hadn't heard from in a while.  A couple of years ago she and her husband and now 5-year old daughter moved to The Netherlands to be closer to her husband's parents.  It was for only three years and after the initial shock, my friend accepted it was what God wanted them to do and off they went.  We shed tears of sorrow and joy, and we laughed about memories and times we'd laughed before, and we wished them well.  After all they'd be back in a few years.  We could email, see each other on Facebook, she'd come home for visits.

Finally last night, a post from my friend on Facebook!  No, wait -- it's from her husband.  He's telling us that my friend died suddenly on Sunday.  The tears flowed down my face.  She was just in her 30s, she had a full life ahead, she had this beautiful marriage, and she had this amazingly beautiful little girl to raise.  No details were given.  Just the facts -- she is gone.  I've asked God why her dreams won't come to fruition, and He has told me that He "had other plans."

I think I won't complain any more about the summer I feel I've lost.  I've lost a treasure far more precious than a few weeks or months.  A young, faith-filled spirit who always made me smile is gone.  Her memory will live on forever in my heart and when I think of her, I will think of Patience, a virtue I am learning slowly but can so clearly see now that God has chosen my friend as the next angel in the Heavens.  A perfect angel.

Dreams are to be dreamed. 

If remembered, dreams are beautiful or they can be frightening.

Dreams can't be relied on to come true.

Because often God has other plans.

Under Reconstruction and On the Way Back

Since late February, I feel as though I've literally been "under reconstruction."  Between surgeries, injuries, and other inherent problems, I've been out of commission and for a good portion of the time "typeless" (if there is such a word) and unable to blog.  I should have posted a note before my absence, but life got in the way.

However, I feel certain I'm on the way back to wholeness, thanks to God's grace and healing.  And I'm ready to get back to blogging and working on my writing projects.  I hope in the next few days and weeks to share some lessons learned recently, and I hope that by sharing them with you they might enrich your lives.

Until then, I pray God's blessings on each of you.