The world is being remade

quotes, dying dreams, a confession

I sat beside the bed, listening to the beeping and stroking Micah’s tiny infant hand. He was sleeping, as perfectly fine as he had been for a few days, despite the irregular noises from the monitor that had woken me up from my uncomfortable bed in the corner. The nurses joked that I slept hard, dead to the world—which was a welcome reprieve from what the world currently offered—until Micah’s monitors went off. Then I stood upright beside his bed, letting the fog clear from my brain, almost before the nurses got to the room.¹ 

Middle of the night musings are normally more melodramatic than middle of the day ones and mine were circling around the same thing as I sat in that hospital room. Were all of my dreams for our future family ruined? Would Micah survive? Would we go on to have more children? I had always dreamed of a bigger family, banked on it actually, and now the dream stood in jeopardy.² The world was being remade in front of me and I was not sure what it would offer. Or if I would want the offering.

That release of dreams has happened many more times since then.³ Perhaps more in my life than some others, but certainly less in my life than many others too.⁴ I once again stand on the cusp of allowing the world to be remade. 

In November, I planted flower bulbs. I’ve started gardening over the past few years and every year, I do a little bit more. The more of this year was planting the bulbs. They can’t become flowers unless I put them in the ground, cover them with dirt and leave them to something bigger than myself. No matter how much I might think that they shouldn’t be exposed to frost and cold, they won’t grow in any other conditions. 

I find myself looking at dreams I have had and I know I need to let them die and be reborn as something different. The cold winter morning that looks in my office window at me while I sit in my chair reminds me that sometimes dormancy or even death is not the end. A dream might have run its course. It might have never served me. If I refuse to let it go, I will find myself searching for a life that cannot be, frustrated and defeated at every turn. But if I plant it in the dirt perhaps something new can grow there. 

It’s time for me to lay aside some of the dreams I have for our family. Not because they are bad. They are not. They are, however, unrealistic for our family and I can only cultivate the family that I have. This doesn’t mean that I won’t have dreams for our family; I’m not quitting. But dreams must correspond to reality in some way. As Wendell Berry reminds me again and again, “We live the given life, not the planned.” If I attempt to live the plan, I will destroy the given life that I am tasked with cultivating. 

Living the given life means looking it square in the face, naming it, refusing to ignore the things I don’t like or wouldn’t have chosen. It means grieving what I hoped things would be and then burying those things in the ground, giving them the chance to blossom in the spring as something new. 

I’m praying for creativity. Not for Instagram (which I again stopped using) or even for Substack (as much as I love it here). I am praying for the creativity and the courage to reimagine our lives, to let go of what might have been and do something with what is, to think outside of the box, to lean a new direction, to let something else beautiful grow. 

We’re only at the beginning of reimagining again. I don’t have answers or even many ideas. Yet. I am praying. I am paying attention.⁵ I’m throwing baths and playgrounds in our weekend routines. We’re starting equine therapy. We’re incorporating new family rhythms and establishing some with just the other boys. This divide is what cuts the deepest for me and yet it has become the most necessary both for Micah’s flourishing and the growth of the other boys. 

There’s another quote. “All the trees are losing their leaves and not one of them is worried.”⁶ When I sit in my chair praying, I’m staring at the bare branches of the trees that surround our house. It’s normal, necessary even, for them to shed their leaves, to look a little bleak and dead for a while. As overworked as that metaphor that be, it’s stuck around for a reason. Our lives aren’t as linear as we might like. We don’t go from progress to progress. We find ourselves visiting the same seasons once again but as different people. So you’ll forgive me if I use the picture here. It’s the most real—and the most hopeful—example that I have. The leaves will come again. I can let these go. They won’t serve me if I keep them.

I find myself recommitting to what is. I’m going to need energy that I don’t want to give. I’ve been lazy, apathetic. I’ve wanted it to be what it wasn’t and then got annoyed with what it was. That’s not a way to a beautiful life for any of us. If I’m going to cultivate this magnificent and sometimes overwhelming life, it’s going to require a lot from me. I want to give it. 

1. Micah spent a month in the hospital when he was born. This is the old part of the story.

2. Banking on things we aren’t promised is, of course, part of the problem.

3. Something no one told me about being an adult. Though it’s possible I just wasn’t listening.

4. The upheavals and sufferings of others should not keep you from acknowledging your own pain but it can help put it into perspective.

5. I have found that often answers to prayer come as unexpected ideas, things I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. I pray and I wait. God does answer.

6. The only attribution I could find for this quote was on a blog and it said it was from Donald Miller. Anybody know for sure?