Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner
Sometimes the tattered baggage we carry are the dreams that we so desperately had hoped would come true. We struggle to carry them and we struggle to put them down. The weight. Day after day. They are so heavy and our shoulders ache - yet we hold onto them with a small hope that the plans we made will not evanesce... and in our realization of the dream being lost.. heartbroken and weary, we struggle to drop them and simply leave them. They were after all once our dreams, our plans. There is no simple anything in the end of such hopes... or parting with them.
I am a dreamer.
I am a planner.
I had it all mapped out - many years ago the way I wanted my life to go.
How many of us do? We find purpose in dreams, in planning. In our relationships. In our jobs. In our endeavors. We plan how it will go and soon realize how futile plans can be. Dreams are effortlessly crushed - and life is sometimes cruel and unfair.
We hope to rely on the future.. but the future is unpredictable. And the journey continues to change based on the turns we take along the way. One simple change in direction can put you on an entirely different course - directions change at our hands and at the hands of others. Your turns, their turns and now you are here on this road. Wait, this didn't look like the road you saw in your dream though...
And life changes.... ambiguity takes over.
And that dream you had is now the heavy bag at your side.
It is a fools belief that all remains the same. Even the simple change of seasons mock such a presumption. Repose and rebirth and rebirth and repose... a cycling perpetuity. Only change is inevitable and certain.
Ambiguity is uncertainty. When we have to give up dreams, we give up hope, certainty and vision of what life will be. What new shiny bags once held dreams now dangle from a calloused hand as a worn box of encompassed uncertainty.
Who in their right minds wants to believe ambiguity and uncertainty can be anything but disastrous, let alone described as delicious in the quote above. Delicious? How are we to savor and enjoy the uncertainty that accompanies an imperfect ending?
It is all how we view it friends. Because living means some dreams will come to fruition and some will not. You don't get to pick and choose... except how you react to the way the card plays itself.
Desperate amounts of uncertainty - plaguing or plummeting you. It ends up being your choice. So yes, your story didn't go the way you wanted to write it. At the end of the day you lost another dream. You're tired. Resentful. You're holding heavyweights, heavy forsaken dreams. You're scared to death to let them go, but it kills you to keep trying to lug them around.
Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. - Matthew 11:28
Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden - Psalm 68:19
Eventually - you realize you can plan all you want. But control is only ever ours in our reactions to the actions surrounding us. You can plan and map your life out from cradle to grave - but there will be many unanswered prayers, and many unanswered dreams. You will be left with uncertainty. And of your own strength you can lend uncertainty to being left frail and jaded. Or you can in His strength and your faith, embrace the uncertainty as part of the journey. Savor it. Trust His plan even in your broken dreams.
Thankful today for One who carries all lost dreams, bestows all new dreams - so that even when I struggle to put them down or decide to haul them another mile... He carries my heavy weight, takes my uncertainty and gives my soul rest. I don't have to be afraid of the plans that I had - or dreamed - or lost.
He knows the plans {and the dreams} He has for me.
