Broken Dreams

It’s hard to live with broken dreams, but far worse not to have them in the first place. And I've pretty much made my home, for almost my whole life, within the boundaries of this photo. Ok, maybe it needs widening a bit, but this is the City of Derby as seen from a hill on my regular walk around Kedleston. England’s green and pleasant land! And somewhere here is every school I ever attended, every place I ever worked and every house I can remember living in. Yeh, I was born in Singapore but too young to have any memories. My parents, four sisters and three of my four kids have their home here as well. Seems we don’t move around much do we? But there’s nothing special about the place at all, not for me anyway. Except that this is where most everyone I particularly care about lives. There’s one special very person who’s gone to live with Jesus in heaven of course. And I also have a daughter in nearby Loughborough. But they’re rather more accessible aren’t they? So I see her and her family quite a bit! But not Jane; not until I get my own one way ticket. It would make life much easier if the Lord would issue say a day pass now and again wouldn’t it! Well I can dream can’t I?

Bereavement messes everything up. Jane and I were making all sorts of plans until her final few months. So if the Lord had chosen to miraculously heal her she would have hit the ground running with one or two business projects for sure. And over the years we had many conversations about relocating to any number of different locations. Like the Lake District, just briefly in our early years, though I even spoke to my boss about a transfer to that region. Then when we were young we idly talked of emigrating to Canada or New Zealand for a real new start. And when we became Christians we adopted a whole new approach as we recognised that it is the Lord who directs our paths. Yes he chooses the very place that we should live. So we reached out for guidance and at every opportune moment explored vision. I guess there’s something inside that keeps stirring towards moving on. Then our visit to New York and Jane’s engagement with Art Therapy got us to look at the possibility of working there for a season. Her master’s degree was based on work in that city. Some very English friends once obtained a temporary work permit, as housekeepers, somewhere near Chicago, so why not us? But time and time again over the past few years we talked of living in Deal, Kent. So we began to push at that door, expecting it to open, until ill health demanded constraint. It’s hard to live with broken dreams, but far worse not to have them in the first place…

Colossians 3:2 ‘Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.’ (NLT)