Over my two week span at home we went to the lake, our first family vacation in what feels like forever. My grandparents good friend, who is a writer, came to give me some advice and ended up teaching my whole family a world of God. My dad calls her pretty Aunt Kay because she looks like a million bucks, even at 70, and has been apart of their family since my Great grandmother started the first womans bible study in Atlanta. She is one of those wonderful honest speakers, the kind that doesn’t fluff up the truth to make you feel better. While sitting on the dock she said something I haven’t been able to shake, “life is a series of shattered dreams” she tole me.
I was hoping it wasn’t true, surely God doesn’t want his children to have shattered dreams. Surely he wants us to be happy. It bothered me, I have a strong attachment to my dreams and was not ready to let them go. It has been almost a month since then and every time I hear something discouraging her voice pops back into my head, “life is a series of shattered dreams”.
Finally yesterday I sat down to hash it out with God, I had to let him know that this child was not OK with a life of shattered dreams. So I went on a walk with Aiden and tried to convince God that I know best. (Sometimes I feel that he lets me talk just so he has something to laugh about with his friends)
The more I actually considered it the more I realized it was true. We all have things in our lives that are shattered dreams. Maybe a family member is living in a pit of sin, maybe a divorce that seems unfair, maybe sin has ripped a friendship apart, or someone you love got delt a bad hand. It seems that the more you talk to people the more you see that this life is a series of shattered dreams. Diseases, disappointment, death, pain, addictions, the list goes on and on and all of us had dealt with it in our lives. We hope and pray that our life will turn out one way but then life actually happens and our dreams shatter and in their place is Gods hope. The dreams we had for our family die, the dreams we have for friendships die, the dream for our marriages, and mostly the dreams we had for our selves. As much as i was hoping to prove her wrong, me having the great wisdom of twenty three and her of a lifetime, i realized she was right. God tells us that in this world we will have trouble BUT we can take heart because he has overcome the world. Each shattered dream was meant to teach us something, that our God will never fail and we weren’t meant for this world. We weren’t meant for the broken we were made to be in perfect peace with our creator. As long as we are here our dreams will continue to shatter but as long as we put our hope in Christ we have something to hold on to.
A friend of mine was recently re diagnosed with cancer, another one is dealing with an unfaithful partner, another one depression, the next financial turmoil. The list goes on, the situations and names slightly changed but all revealing the same thing we live in a world of shattered dreams but for a God whos promises never fail. So pretty aunt Kay as much as you are right I think you need to ad another part to your truth. Our lives maybe a series of shattered dreams but our God has promises that never fail.
