Have you ever been told a promise but it never came true? Have you ever known that something in your life was supposed to happen but obstacle and hardship came at you and caused you to give up on that promise? Have you ever had a dream so BIG and you knew from the very depths of you that you were to obtain that dream, but you continue to fight with everything you got, and still no dream come true, no happily – ever – after – fairytale ending?

I hear ya!!

It was probably ten years ago, Jaret and I lived in our first house and Chalei, my daughter, would have been about three years old. Jaret and I had always been undecided about whether or not we wanted more children and even if we did, we couldn’t decide on the right timing. It was one night, that I sat on my black leather couch engrossed in some meaningless novel that I suddenly had a thought cross my mind. This thought was so loud and so clear that it made me shut my book and run and talk to Jaret. The thought was, “You are going to have a son and his name will be Judah!” Honestly, it was so real; it was so vivid that no one could tell me otherwise. At that very moment, I believed it. I knew it. Jaret on the other hand, well he thought I was crazy, but that was no discouragement to me. I KNEW I would have a son and his name would be Judah.
Heck, you are all probably thinking I am crazy right now.

It was probably a week later, that some random person we didn’t know came up to us and told us that we would have a son. I kid you not I yelped when I heard that. Okay, not yelped like a dog, maybe I squealed, but gosh, not like a pig. Some sort of noise escaped from my mouth because it was confirmation that I was certainly NOT CRAZY. That was enough to make Jaret believe what I told him about our Son to be true.

In the months that followed, even though I was not pregnant, I could see that baby boy and I loved that baby. It was a dream and it felt real. It made me so happy when I thought about him; nothing and no one could convince me of anything different.

It took me awhile to get pregnant, I think at least 6 to 12 months, but I remember the moment that I was. It quite literally was a DREAM COME TRUE. I was a working at a nail salon at the time, I had quite a large client  base as a nail technician and I told everyone, I MEAN EVERYONE. I was beyond excited, the promise I was given was coming true. I remember the moment we told Chalei, she was over the moon happy. One night as she was brushing her teeth, she was singing into her toothbrush this cute little song that she was going to be a sister. Honestly, at that moment, our very dreams were coming true. I talked to that baby, I sang to that baby, and I prayed over that baby.

It was a couple of months later that I began to bleed. I remember thinking that this wasn’t real, that I was PROMISED this baby, so therefore I was going to be okay. I went to the doctor and he ordered an ultrasound and I had to wait the weekend to hear anything back. I continued to bleed but I held onto hope.

Monday morning came and I knew in my heart of hearts that the baby in my womb was gone but I refused to believe that I had lost that little promise.

Jaret and I were sitting in the doctor’s office as my doctor walked into the room. I could tell by the look on his face that everything was NOT OKAY. He told me this line about how these things happen and maybe there was something wrong with the baby and that I could always try again, but the baby was gone. I sat there looking at the doctor and watching him talk but hearing nothing else he had to say. I was telling myself not to cry and not to break down in front of the doctor, but on the inside I was already breaking down. I clenched my jaw and held my lips as stiff as I could all the while choking back the sting of the outburst of tears that were trying to escape me.

Jaret and I thanked the doctor and I hopped off the doctor’s bed and promptly headed for the door. I kept saying to myself, “Hold it together, Hold it together, and just make it to the car.” The moment my hand hit the door handle and I jumped inside was the moment the deep sobs I had been so masterfully holding in came pouring out in what seemed like a violent outpouring. Those sobs came from a place so deep within me; a place I didn’t even know existed. We sat in our vehicle and I just poured out my heart and cried out my eyes on the loss of our child, the loss of what seemed like my promise; the loss of what I thought was a dream come true.

I had to work that day, so I had Jaret call my co workers and tell them what had happened and that I would be coming in but not to mention anything to me as I would try to hold it together.
I took two deep breaths and opened the doors to the salon I worked at, sat at my desk with my first client. As luck would have it, my client (who shared in my excitement for being pregnant), said, “So, have you chose a theme for your babies room?” She didn’t know any better and I didn’t have the strength to discuss what had just happened to me, so I pretended it didn’t happen. I made light of the question and did my best to carry on. My whole day continued like that, all things babies. With every conversation and every question it was like a knife going deeper and deeper into an already raw wound.

I made it home and I felt numb and emotionally drained. I sat in front of my fireplace and just stared. It was about an hour when I finally succumbed to the grief that I was feeling and like a dam that had just broke, those sobs began to pour and pour out of me. Jaret sat there helpless. There wasn’t anything he could do. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.

I moved on. I stopped crying. I stopped wondering why. I stopped blaming myself. I stopped looking for someone to blame. I also stopped doing something else. I stopped DREAMING.

I closed my heart to the possibility of having another baby. If I was truthful with myself, the pain was WAY too much and in all reality I did not want to feel that again. Jaret and I talked about having another and I talked about it with people, but in the deepest parts of me, I already knew that the dream was long gone and I was moving past that.

I think if I was really honest with myself, I think I might have believed that I was given the dream of my heart, but something or somehow it died. I had no answer to how or why, it was just over. I didn’t need to be excited for it to come to pass anymore. In my mind, the dream did come to pass and then it died and now it was gone; it was over.

That is what I told myself anyway, because for 5 years, I thought about Judah. I thought about having a son. I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it for long though, because the possibilities hurt way too much.

I remember sitting in a church service and a man was speaking. He said something that awakened the dream of having a son. He said, “God gives you promises because He knows there will be a fight for you to attain it. So, He gives you the promise so you have something to hold on to through the battle.” That spoke to the very depths of my heart where I had closed off the dream of having a son.

I began to dream again and Jaret and I conceived. I remember the fear that came over me as I read the positive pregnancy stick. I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to run for fear that I would live that nightmare all over again.

The morning after we found out that I was pregnant, Jaret came to me and asked, “What’s our sons name again?” There was no doubt in his mind and no doubt in mine what was happening, the dream that I had lost was being re-birthed in our hearts once again. I replied, “Judah Eli!” Jaret said, “that’s right, Judah Eli, our son.”

Our ultrasound was booked for the five month mark of my pregnancy. It was the time where we found out what the sex of the baby was going to be. This time was different though because I knew that knew there was to be a Judah Eli in our house, we were a little afraid that the technician would say it was a girl. We believed so strongly in this ‘dream’ that if she said it was a ‘girl’, then that would mean we would be having more children until our ‘Judah’ was born.

The ultrasound confirmed it was a boy, and a few months later our, Judah Eli, was born. I can’t explain to you the feeling as I held him in my arms. He wasn’t any more special than Chalei was to us, but he was a dream that we thought had died, but now had come true. It was a dream fulfilled. It was a dream that cost us a lot of tears, a lot of fighting, and a lot of pain.

As I was thinking about this today, I began to think about the deepest dreams of our hearts. How many of us have dreams in our heart that we have fought so hard for but something happened or multiple things happened that caused us so much pain that we gave up and we let the dream die or maybe we thought the dream was never meant to be. Then, every time we even let ourselves think about that dream we stop ourselves because the pain or the fear is too great, we stop ourselves. I get it! I really do! I have more than my share of “Judah” stories, where I have stopped myself from dreaming because the fight seemed too big or the “Nay Sayers” told me it wouldn’t work, or I just plain gave up.

Here is my thought on all of this: What if I was given the dream and given the promise because God knew that I would walk through hardship? What if He gave me the promise so that when I lost that baby I would still have something to hold on to? Do you get what I am saying? I am saying that, God knows every moment of every day before it happens and  if YOU have a dream or a promise, it was given to you because God knew you would have a fight on your hands. He gave you that dream because He promised it would be fulfilled but you would need to hold on to that dream until it happened. He knew there would be a series of events that would happen and He knew you needed a promise and a dream to hold on to. He gave you this dream and this promise because He didn’t want you to give up on it!

All of us have a dream; I would bet money on it. Don’t let those dreams die because they are too painful or too hard to fight for. Awaken those dreams and let’s begin to fight again for them. You are a fighter! I am a fighter! We can do this!

I dare you to DREAM AGAIN!

Last week I was having a conversation with my husband. It was late one night, the kids had gone to bed and Jaret and I got our pens, papers, and calculators out and began to do a budget. We became somewhat sidetracked and began to discuss all the things we wanted to have and wanted to get. The list was something like this: New house, new truck, new motorbike, new tires with rims for car, new deck, new fence, hot tub. I am sure the list could have gone on but that was the jest of it. As we were discussing this we suddenly were becoming very depressed by our money situation and annoyed by the fact that we didn’t have enough money and we needed to make more money. We became more irritated as we talked with each other as well as became resentful of our lives at the moment. The way we were talking was as though we had nothing. We went to bed that night feeling very frustrated and actually bitter towards the situation we were in.

I woke up the next morning and was getting ready for work still feeling very resentful towards our current situation. We weren’t going broke, we weren’t in a bad financial state but it was the fact that we felt we deserved all of these ‘things‘ right now and it was that state that made us feel as though we were broke.

I am really telling on myself now and wish I could have begun writing this post as a story about a “friend” I knew Ha Ha. Even as I write this, I fully realize what a spoiled brat I sounded like. I do believe I needed a good slap. How embarrassing this is even to let you in to a space in my head (heart) that had become quite ugly. Oh well, I continue on.

That morning I was driving to work in vehicle I bought a year ago. I was remembering how happy I was to buy that car. I had previously been driving an SUV that looked nice on the outside but for years I knew that at any given moment it could just fall into a thousand pieces. It felt so unsafe to drive. Then I began to think of where Jaret and I first started out. I drove a crappy car that had more than one problem with it (99 problems and the car had all of them). The windshield wipers didn’t work and in the winter we would have to stop on the side of the highway and throw snow onto the windshield so we could clean it off or in the summer pull over to side of road until the rain subsided just to enough to be barely visible enough to drive. The brakes were shot and the car made the worst sound every time you came to a stop. The car blew out huge puffs of black smoke every time you took off. Seriously, this car had seen better days but we couldn’t afford anything better and we definitely couldn’t afford to fix it. We never bought new clothes, we could barely afford groceries let alone any ‘perks’. There were days I went without coffee because that was a luxury (GASP!!!!). I remember the days that we would be so excited to be able to get a slush from the corner store and on a good day we could rent a movie.

So, as I was driving to work that morning, I began to mentally slap myself. I suddenly had taken on the belief that I constantly needed to be striving for bigger and better. Now, don’t get me wrong I do believe in DREAMING BIG and working towards those goals but not at the expense of losing your thankfulness. I began to take inventory on my life. I have a beautiful house; a house that at one time was a dream and not a reality. I have a car that I still love and feel completely safe in. I have a beautiful family and we seldom go without. I realized that somewhere along the way, I lost my thankfulness for everything I had been given. I bought into the commercialism of this age. I bought into the “keeping up with the Jones” mentality. I bought into the reward of ‘getting‘ instead of the reward of ‘giving‘. This is what began to drive me.

My friends, if we live life like that, we will never be happy because we will never have enough. I realized how far God had brought me and how much I had been given. I realized that I needed to find my thankfulness again. As I recalled all these things that morning in my short drive to work I began to be thankful again. I could finally see just how blessed I was and how I actually wasn’t broke at all. The very moment that I began to find my thankfulness, was the moment I felt peace settle down around me. I became happy again. You know it’s crazy that being ungrateful and unthankful steals your joy away too.

We can get our priorities so out of whack by comparing what others have with what we don’t. Trying to arrive at some destination to which we think we will FINALLY be happy.

Reality is: There is no amount of possessions that will finally make us ARRIVE at happiness; it’s when we become THANKFUL for every moment, every blessing, and all our surroundings that we FINALLY ARRIVE.

Stay thankful, My Friends!!