Overcoming broken dreams or driving while looking at rearview mirror

Broken dreams, everybody has them, but sadly most people have trouble resolving them.  Picking our way through a field of broken dreams is not easy.  The Bible, right from the outset introduces us to the harsh reality of dealing with broken dreams in our lives.  Thankfully we can draw wisdom from those who have gone before us.  Imagine what Adam and Eve had to go through to cope with their loss of paradise.  And  think of what it must have been like for Naomi and Ruth .  They  suffered  and navigated through their grief until God made a way.

The book of Exodus introduces us to the biggest field of broken dreams anyone can imagine, it’s called the wilderness.  First we encounter Moses whose dream of delivering Israel died with the Egyptian he killed.  He ended up burying his dream-turned-nightmare in the backside of the wilderness.  But the greatest lessons to be learned about overcoming broken dreams is the story of the children of Israel coming out of Egypt and passing through the wilderness into the Promised Land.  The wilderness is that place we must pass through in the journey from promise to fulfillment.  It is here that God teaches us how to pick our way through a field of broken dreams and position ourselves to be overcomers.

There are two aspects to resolving broken dreams and coming out on the other end the better for it.  We must stop the negatives while initiating some positives. This is difficult because some of us continue to live life like driving while looking at the rearview mirror.   For a season in my life I found myself not being able to let go of the pain.  The fact is many of us are in the same boat.  We can’t help on focusing on the personal pain that happened way back there instead of looking forward in hope.

In order to overcome we first need to admit, acknowledge and be aware of the  negatives.  Now for sure we can all come up with our own set of negatives.  But there are three major negatives, temptations if you will, that we must strive with God’s help to overcome.

1.  Make a decision to let go of the past.  Paul says “forgetting what is behind” in Phil 3:13. – The fact is spending all our time energy and money looking back and rehearsing all the bad choices we made that got us in our mess, only leads to deepened sadness.  Moreover, focusing on the past robs us from enjoying the present and blinds us from seeing a preferred future. Will be like the people of Egypt complaining about the leeks and  crying “oh that we’d never left Egypt” or will we focus on the promises of God, the promised land of God’s goodness if you will.  

2.  Don’t spiritualize your anger, rather admit that you are angry. I have an anger wheel in my office with the question, “what’s behind your anger?

 It then gives  a bunch of options, including, frustration, disappointment, guilt, hurt anxiety and sadness to name a few.  Disappointment and frustration leads to anger and that anger is usually directed at those whom we feel are the cause of our broken dreams.  It may be toward others, ourselves and even God.  This is a common temptation, but a dangerous one.  We must battle this one through and come to a place of forgiveness with God’s help.  If not we will end up wringing someone’s neck, abandoning God or hanging ourselves.  And none of those will help make things any better.

3.  Cut out the Complaining – Grumbling and complaining about trying circumstances beyond our control is debilitating.  It’s like an infectious disease that incapacitates us and all those around us.  It is often is rooted in self-pity.  We must deal ruthlessly with self pity because it fuels depression.

Sometimes the only way through this these temptations is in implementing positive actions.  So here are two things you can do proactively to move on from a broken dream. 

4. Focus on the potential hope.  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said 

‘after you take a step, than take another’ Forgetting what is behind – Paul challenges us to forget what is behind and I believe that when we are stuck on the past, we must make the decision to creatively forgive, creatively forget.  But how.   Well in order to say a good hello we need to say a definitive good-bye. So why not “Bury the Broken Dream?” – Since God is the re-builder of shattered dreams we must place the broken pieces in His hands.  Let your unfulfilled dream die.  Quit pumping any more effort into reviving it, take it off life support and let it die.  Have a funeral service for your unfulfilled dream and lay it to rest in God. 

More often than not, that will bring a great sense of relief, as if a heavy burden has lifted.  People must do this sort of thing all the time with failed businesses, poor career choices, estranged relationships, devalued assets etc.  Only in letting something die and burying it once and for all, can you ever hope to move on with your life.  A dream like a seed must fall into the ground and die if it is ever to bear fruit.  (John 12:24)

5.  Make the choice to focus on the potential hope and not the personal pain.  One way we often beat ourselves up in a prolonged trial is in thinking if we just had more faith we’d get out of it.  That can lead to misplaced expectations, presumption and deepened disappointment.  

Having hope is more important in dealing with broken dreams than faith.  Hope puts our reliance on God’s intervention while conjured up faith has a way of putting the burden on us.  Who do you want the burden for resolution to be upon? 

In Jim Collins book Good to Great he tells the story of Vice Admiral James Stockdale who was a Vietnam prisoner of war for seven years.  Collins recounts how Stockdale differentiated between those who survived interminable imprisonment and those who didn’t. 

Surprisingly it was the optimists that didn’t make it.  “They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale however had a different approach.  “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”  That to me is a hope approach.  In many ways hope precedes faith.  Without true hope you cannot have faith.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)  In other words faith is based on a solid hope in God.  Without that kind of hope there can be no faith. In coping with broken dreams try to focus more on having Stockdale’s kind of hope and not the contrived faith of the “optimists.”  You too will prevail and turn your experience into a defining event the gives you “a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”  (Isaiah 61:3)