Day Twenty-Eight

MOURN DREAMS THAT HAVE DIED

My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word!

—PSALM 119:28 ESV

I wanted to live in Scotland for eleven years before I ever did it. Eleven years. Multiple times during my twenties, I had opportunities to move there, and I always said no. The timing wasn’t ever quite right, I never felt like it was God’s best plan, but also, in the back of my head . . . I was scared. I was scared that moving to Scotland would mean I would never get married.

I always dreamed I’d be married with kids before I reached my thirties, and because of that dream, I let an entire decade go by in hopes that choosing America meant choosing marriage. Now, I’m not saying that staying in America was out of God’s will. I know He did good things with my life in that decade; I just know that each time one of those opportunities was placed before me, fear whispered to me. And I listened.

I sat with my counselor two weeks ago, and as counseling appointments tend to go, I verbally vomited everything I had been processing during the weeks since our last meeting. When I was done, she looked me straight in the eyes and told me it was okay to mourn.

“Wait,” I said. “I don’t think I agree with that. I think I’m supposed to be fine that this is God’s plan and that I trust Him and that He is working all things—”

“The dreams you thought would come true in a certain time frame never did. You saw a life for yourself that you will never have. You can mourn that loss.”

She interrupted me.

“The dreams you thought would come true in a certain time frame never did. You saw a life for yourself that you will never have. You can mourn that loss.”

No one had ever said that to me before. But I needed to hear it. I may not have gotten married in the decade I planned, but God led me down amazing paths where I was able to glorify Him.

It’s easy to take the unanswered prayers and disappointments in our lives and brush them under the rug so we don’t have to think about them. But you know what, friend? It’s okay to mourn your dreams that have died. Looking at those dreams takes bravery. But when you look them in the face, head-on, and let them go, you will see how God’s plan for your life, although different from what you expected, is a beautiful story of its own that you never could have dreamed up for yourself.

BE BRAVE: What dead dream do you need to mourn?