Dreams Die

It's weird how much of a tendency we have at wanting to hurry through the pain. Sometimes we put up the walls and or try and skip right over the mess. You can close the door but every time you open it and look out to see if the pain has gone it will always be there. The only way is through it. Pain is not fun. Vulnerability is not the easiest.

When my mom died I put a wall up and moved on only to find that I had put a wall so big around my heart that I wasn't being vulnerable with anyone in my life not even God.

 

This time around, in an effort to keep moving through pain and not hurrying through it I have been writing and sharing more of my heart than I have in a while. I do not want  all of the hard work that I did in 2014 to be forgotten and I do not want to return to that state of living.

And yet, its been weeks of processing before I could sit and finish this post.  Its real and its hard.  And typing it, reading it, and saying it out loud is even tougher. I did not know what to title this post and I am not sure I even like the title.

One main theme that I am realizing and still trying to put my head around is that dreams die. 

 

The night AJ died, some of my dreams and desires and things that I was excited for died with him. I know that I have shared a little or with some, losing AJ triggered a sibling loss but also a maternal loss. I know that I do not have kids and cannot really understand, but I know that AJ being 10years younger and with my mom dying when he was only 12, the maternal loss is there. 

 

Just last year about this time we were having discussions on if AJ should come and live with Brian and I. And I had kind of made up my mind that if the opportunity/discussion came came up again, I would not hesitate. I wanted more for AJ. And I wanted to try and give him all that I could. He had a rough go at it since mom died and I wanted my chance at helping, because I loved him. Not because I had all of the answers or even could imagine all of the hard that would have come if AJ had come to live with us.  But I loved him and out of that love I would have given anything to aid him. Brian and I never got that chance to welcome him into our home.  That has been and is still one of the hardest things that both Brian and I are walking through. 

 

But as we were talking about the possibility, I as many of you do too, dream up what could be. I dreamed up what life could have been like. Now please know, while I dreamed, I knew it wouldn't be easy and it would  change my relationship with AJ. But I dreamed that he could come and live here. We could sit on the couch and read together. Something we both enjoy. We could work in the garden together, make dinner together, and we would even teach him how to drive.  Maybe run track at the high school and I would go watch him run. He could mow lawns here or work somewhere in our small town. We could play softball at the field right by our house or ride bikes around town.  He could go with me to watch Sully and Harmon on Sunday nights. 

 

The possibilities of shared time together were endless.  You see that was what I would have given him, time.  AJ needed time, love, and an invitation into healing.  That's all I had to give but I knew that if I was present that it would be okay no matter what obstacles would inevitably come up.

Even when he didn't come and move here and I had come to peace with that, I still dreamed for him.  I dreamed of him graduating high school, going into the military, and then to college.  I dreamed and prayed for the same dreams that he had wanted for his life. 

But dreams die.  And three months ago, Monday, these dreams died.