Just Dreaming

My heart is filled with dreams of heaven. Yet all around, my life feels like the worst bad dream I’ve ever had. Bereavement, after a lifetime of love is tough. Quite unreal. I’d love to wake up and find that it is was all just a dream. Everything, I mean absolutely everything, feels wrong. That sense of belonging… gone. Forever? I simply feel incomplete, split apart. My heart is broken, without even the temporary relief of numbness. Raw undiluted grief never more than the next heartbeat away. I am stubborn, determined to walk as I see fit and find the challenge to change direction not yet compelling. Should I now resist the call of extreme sadness and simply shrug away tears? I will not allow entrapment to thwart God purpose for my future. He has a plan for all who live. And every day of my life is written in his book. But is my season of mourning complete? Is it time, is it yet possible for me to let go of the only true love I’ve ever known? Perhaps more to the point, am I ready to say goodbye to the life I loved so very much. The life of a married man, sharing every decision, every possession and just about everything I ever did with another person. My lovely wife. We cried, laughed, shouted and whispered our way through 40 years of love. No more. It is done, she’s gone. Forever. Until we meet in heaven… and take that woodland walk in true perfection.

I cannot live in the past. I have to embrace my future. Yet all I have are dreams. Insubstantial, and impossible to grasp in their incompleteness. But always the first step is right there waiting to be taken. I must take hold of God vision for tomorrow, leaving behind unchangeable history. What’s done is gone. That which is to come may yet be shaped and where needed reshaped, by God purpose and man’s determination. My determination. I will live again. To stir imagination, creativity and focus is next. All within the bounds of God presence. I’m encouraged with some small improvement to my health, even though today saw a small setback. A migraine after a poor night’s sleep. Irrelevant. Maybe a statement of practical goals is needed… it’s time for me to start writing music, learn a new instrument, get out my art materials, and even begin to write a more substantial work. It’s time to be more focussed upon prayer and seeking the Lord for his word for my life. It’s time to dream a dream for tomorrow. And as often as possible I will walk out of my house and engage with whatever this world sets before me.

Acts 2:17 ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.’ (NLT)