What Will You Do If Your Dreams Do Not Come True?

You might think this is a strange title for a blog post. Especially since it is the beginning of the year. I should write something more motivational and encouraging right?

The truth is that the answer to this particular question will determine the direction of your life this year. It is a question that should not be taken lightly. Let me tell you why:

The beginning of a new year inevitably begs for new dreams to be birthed. We all have goals, dreams and aspirations. We all have things that our mind effortlessly drifts toward when it is on idle mode. There is something right now in your life that is your exclusive motivation to continue forward. There is something that you obsessively think about. There is something that determines your mood, alters your behavior and directs your life choices.

Whatever that thing is, the power it yields is unmatched by anything else. Only you know what it is. You might not have even shared it with anyone. Some people connected to you can only assume what it is.

What if I was to tell you that there is a chance that it might never happen? Your dream. Your hope. Your pursuit. Your aspiration. What if there was a chance that it will never come to pass. It will remain in an ethereal sphere never reaching tangible reality. Some years ago, this happened to me. I was wrecked and devastated. Let me share with you a quick story:

When I was a teenager, I was throughly obsessed with becoming a stock broker. Ever since I watched the movie Boiler Room, I could not get this idea out of my head. I wanted to work in a high rise building in New York City. I wanted to live the exciting and jagged edge lifestyle of a stock broker. Think the movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf. When I watched this movie back in 2010, this was the exact picture percolating in my mind during the teen years.

At that early stage of my adult life, I thought this would be the absolute best thing that could happen to me. I shared this dream with my parents. I shared this dream with those close to me. My mind was locked in on this and I wanted it more than anything else.

But as life progressed, this dream became elusive. Not a single event in my life was going the way of this dream. Instead of trading stocks, I was always writing essays. Instead of analyzing the market, I was reading different books and leading bible studies. I slowly started realizing that this was not something that was going to happen in my life. At first, I was devastated. It seemed so real when watching the movie. It seemed so real when I would day dream about it, sitting in my small cubicle, making over 100 phone calls per hour, surrounded by drug addicts and semi-homeless people who also called this call center their preferred employer.

As I got more involved in church and ministry, I realized that God actually knew what He was doing in my life. As my call to ministry was more robustly amplified, I understood what was happening: God took my dream, blew it up into small pieces and destroyed the evidence. He then placed in that empty space something that was conceived not by humanity but rather by divinity.

But the transition process was painful. It is never pleasurable to have your dream taken from you and shattered before your very eyes.

What will you do if your dreams do not come true? What do you do if your dreams do not come true?

In tomorrows post, I want to share with you another story. This time it was not a simple dream of being a stock broker being shattered into smithereens. The stakes were much higher. The dream was much larger. The potential for devastation was insurmountable.

The dream that was crushed was epic in proportion. The reaction of the person with the crushed dream was anything but expected.

Question: What are some of your dreams and goals for this year? How are you planning on aligning them with the will of God for your life?