Dreams Let Go

2 Corinthians 4:17 says that our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs our trouble. After I read this I began to pray that God would prepare my heart for the depth of pain that I will be exposed to, body and soul, with this lifework ahead of me. I then began to wonder and realize that probably my biggest struggle and frustration as a doctor will be the pain that I will not be able to heal, the kind that comes deep down from the soul, the kind that has no tangible answers. I then decided that it will be very hard to look into the eyes of thousands of people from other countries, from other cultures, who had the same dreams that I did but who most certainly did not have the same opportunities. Broken dreams are a nasty thing for a person to process. I’ve had a few of my own, but precious few; will they be enough to empathize with those I'm dying to touch? I doubt it. I’ve been wondering why broken dreams are so hard to recover from; why do we allow something that never happened to make us bitter, to ruin our present realities and the joys and experiences that are ours for the taking? It is one thing for the past to ruin the present. Sad but understandable. But how could a non-existent future ruin the present? That’s simply tragic. I’ve come to the conclusion that when we dream, we hope, and in hoping, we set up false realities in our minds of what the future could look like; we imagine ourselves in that place, or with that person, or in that moment, and down the road, when we finally have to face the impossibility of that reality, we have to let go of something that never even existed. How do you mourn the loss of something that never was yours to have? What do you do with pain that you have no right to feel? Denying it has been proven to be useless. So the only other option is acknowledging it. But by acknowledging it, you give it a place, and how do you give place to something that never was and never will be? It makes me think of a woman who begins to wonder if she is pregnant. For two or three days she holds the possibility of an exciting secret in her heart, wondering and picturing and preparing. Then when she discovers that all is normal, she can’t get rid of the feeling that she has lost her baby. Maybe it doesn’t last for long, or maybe it does, but the point is, she feels the loss of something that never existed, the loss of something that only was present in her mind. What is to be done with this type of pain? Should we to continually try to search our hearts for those things that we are in need of letting go, so that we don’t wake up one day when we are forty-five or fifty and have a breakdown that our lives are interminably set in one direction and cut off from so much of what we dreamed? Some dreams die naturally and without pain, some dreams change, and some dreams are broken as time and circumstances push steadily on without deference to the destruction of a soul in the process. God save us from wasted years given over to deceit and trickery of our own hearts and minds. And give me eyes of understanding and a heart full of compassion and a voice free of judgment for those in the process of letting go.