Pregnancy

Having dreams can be a lot like pregnancy.

You’re going through your life, and suddenly you realize that something is growing inside of you.

Sometimes you remember the exact moment when it was given life; sometimes you can’t and it feels more like an accident

But once it starts growing, it won’t stop.

You can push it to the back of your mind or try to ignore it or drown it out with hard work and reality, but the dream grows and grows within you until you have no choice but to nurture it and bring it to fruition

And then, at some point, the dream is birthed and it grows outside of you and other people nurture it, too, and you reach a point where the small seed inside of you is now something so much bigger than you

And impacting people you’ve never met

And has surpassed even the dream that you had for your dream

And you’re grateful that the dream wouldn’t leave you alone now

Because the pain of the pregnancy and the delivery pales in comparison with the fulfillment of the dream.

That’s the ideal, anyway.

But if you’ve ever had a dream, you know that dreams don’t always end in birth.

A lot of dreams are miscarriages.

In fact, almost any person who has seen their dream come true probably had several dreams before that were aborted or miscarried or killed soon after birth.

Almost no one sees their first dream come to fruition,

and this is called “the struggle.”

Some people experience so many miscarriages in their struggle that they give up on dreaming altogether, because the pain of pregnancy is just too painful to bear anymore.

They would rather live a life without pain than experience the rejection, the failure, the loss of life again.

They can’t bear to have part of themselves die, to see the thing that they have nurtured and cared for and given life to sucked out of them or slowly die within them.

Others are afraid to give birth to their dreams because what if someone else comes along and takes the dream as soon as it is born, twisting it into something that it is not and using it for themselves and not its intended purpose?

These people live lesser lives, knowing that their dream is slowly draining the life from within them, taking their nutrients and sustenance, but they can’t bear to see their dream stolen from them

So they let it lie inside them, terrified to share it with anyone.

Others have their dreams ridiculed and mocked by so many people that they lose the ability to give birth at all—or at least, they think they do.

These are the people who are laughed at their entire lives,

The people who are told, “Someone like you could never do that. Who the hell do you think you are?”

And as their dreams are squashed over and over again, they shut themselves off

And refuse to be fertilized

Because no one has ever championed those dreams and so

It is easier just not to have them at all—or at least, they think it is easier.

Because no matter which camp you fall in, the hard truth is this:

All of us are dreamers.

You might be a dead dreamer, a discouraged dreamer, a depressed dreamer, a disturbed dreamer, a dreamer in denial, or a dysfunctional dreamer, but you are still a dreamer.

Your dreams may have been squashed and trampled and broken and laughed at, but you cannot claim that they weren’t real.

You know what you felt.

Whether your dream is to have a business

Or write a book

Or headline a band

Or dunk in a game

Or graduate from college

Or high school

Or middle school

Or star in a movie

Or start a restaurant

Or be a great lawyer

Or shoe shiner

Or president

Or just to give your kids more opportunities than you had and

Create a family that is whole and loving and safe

Because maybe you never got to live in a family that celebrated your dreams but

You think others should get to

And so you work really hard and you don’t even see yourself as a dreamer or a creative person because those people are artists and writers and musicians…

You are a dreamer, nonetheless.

Even if your only dream is “just” to fall in love and have a family, you still have a dream.

So the question becomes: what do you do with it?

What do you do when it seems like no one else cares about the dream of your heart?

When everyone else tells you that it is impossible or that you could never achieve it

And maybe they’re right, but maybe the next dream or the next dream is the one that comes true?

And sometimes when you’re waiting for the “next,” for the one that finally lands, pushing through all the miscarriages and death,

You might think that you should just stop,

That it would just be easier to stop dreaming

Because you just can’t stand the pain anymore

But

As someone whose dream hasn’t landed yet,

I’m telling you that

You can’t.

You can’t stop dreaming.

Push through the disappointment and the rejection and the pain of pregnancy.

I can’t guarantee you that this will be the one that is birthed and grows, and I can’t guarantee you that it won’t be a miscarriage, and I can’t guarantee that you won’t feel a lot of pain if it doesn’t work out

But I can guarantee you this:

If you stop dreaming, you will stop living.

If dreams, like pregnancies, cease to exist, then life will not go on.