Mastering the Art of Letting Dreams Die

I am passionate about dreaming in this life. I love happy endings and dreams fulfilled. However, there is a very real part of this life that involves learning to allow dreams to come to an end.

Sometimes our dreams die a slow peaceful death and sometimes they come crashing down without any warning they would be gone so soon.

When we are young, the sky can feel like the limit. We don't doubt what our life will bring to us because we are confident that our dreams will come to pass and things will go as planned.

And sometimes they do.

However, as we get older and our dreams become reality, we often realize how much disappointment comes along with our dreams. Life seldom goes exactly as we planned. At times, we find ourselves grabbing for scraps of our dreams that have been left over from our reality.

And then there are the times that our dreams are taken from us completely.

No scraps left to gather. No dream left at all.

Nothing left to manage.

I am a firm believer in redemption, but sometimes there is nothing left to redeem. Sometimes the dream is simply gone.

What then?

How do we move forward in life?

Here are the steps I take when it is time to let a dream die…

1. Acknowledge it is gone.

The first step is to acknowledge what has happened. Look at the situation and define it for what it is. See the loss and allow yourself to acknowledge the new experience you have to live.

Sometimes this is easy and sometimes this is the hardest part of it all.

2. Let it go.

Depending on the loss, this step alone can take some time. Losing something and letting go of it are actually two different steps. The loss comes first, often times, without our consent. Letting go is our participation in the loss. Letting go is our choice to say we are making a new way in our life without our dream.

3. Grieve it.

It's ok and GOOD to acknowledge the loss and allow yourself to feel the pain.

It is important to identify it and talk to someone about it. Even if it sounds silly or you don't think it will help, be sure to find someone you can discuss your loss with.

4. Find hope.

Depending on the depth of your loss, this could take some time. However, at some point, it is essential to discover hope again. Not hope that the dream will return, but hope for a new dream.

5. Decide how you will view your fear.

I have found that once I have chosen to hope again, I am always faced with fear quickly after.  Fear of losing my new dream and fear of having to walk the journey of loss once again.

Fear will tell us he is our protector and our friend, but he is not. His true intention is to keep us limited in our life and keep our dreams small.

You and you alone will define how fear directs your future.

Dreaming is a beautiful part of our life. Losing the dream is not so beautiful, but it is necessary to understand that once we have lost a dream we must walk the steps to grieve our loss.

If we don't, we may experience something worse than our lost dream... A life of no dreaming at all.

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Living the Dream, One Nightmare at a Time

If you would’ve asked me when we got married what our lives would look like in a decade I would’ve said something like this…

I saw Carter and I married with a handful of kiddos, both through pregnancy and adoption.

We would be living outside of a small town, with a bit of land and owning a pet or two.

We would have travelled the world.

 I would be staying at home with my kids, possibly working a day or two outside the home. I thought Carter would be working in the finance world and I hoped that he would enjoy his job.

Of course, I planned on being more in love with my husband than ever.

You want to hear something crazy?

 Every single one of the things that I hoped for my life is my reality.

However...

Even though so many wonderful things have happened, I can honestly say that in the past decade there have been so many things that I did not expect to be part of our journey.

I never expected to come home one day and find that someone had broken into our home. Stealing several thousands of dollars’ worth of memories.

I never expected to wake up one morning and realize my house was quickly becoming an island. We had minutes to get out of our house. One car already totaled from the water.

I never expected our house to catch on fire.

I never realized how many days would be dedicated to the broken appliances and a car that needs to go to the shop.

I never anticipated our dog getting hit by the car and the kitties running away.

I never expected Carter to lose his job after the recession hit.

I sure never saw the friendships that would be no longer.

I never expected to take it so brutally hard when we had our failed adoption.

I didn’t expect the whole parenting thing to be so challenging. I never expected so many tears to come with it, both from my children and myself.

I didn’t realize how many different seasons you experience as a married couple. The moments where you look into each other’s eyes and question one another’s actions, intentions or love. I never thought that I would have days where I really questioned the whole gig.

I never realized that there would not just be hard days… but there would be hard years.

You see, when I looked ahead at my life I saw all the moments of the mountaintops. I didn’t see the valleys.

I saw all of my dreams coming true… but I never realized that the same life that would make my dreams come true would be the very life that brought forth my nightmares.

My friends, life is both extremely wonderful and extremely difficult. We have moments on the mountaintops and moments on the valleys. I don’t think we need to fear the valleys, but I do think we need to understand that they will be part of our journey to the top.

If you find yourself in a valley today. Keep your head up. Try to find beauty right where you are. Where you are today, is not where you will always be, but where you are today is part of the journey to where you are going.

And that my friend, is a beautiful thing.

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A Few Words for the Girl In that White Dress

Get ready for your adventure to begin. You are beginning a long voyage and there is no way to prepare you for what lies ahead. Your life may turn out to be everything you expect or nothing that you predict, or perhaps it will be both, all rolled up into one glorious experience.

I would like to encourage you to let go of some of your expectations. You are predicting a fairy tale when your life will feel more like a rollercoaster.

You will have tough times ahead. It's ok. Every marriage does. Hold your head up. You are strong enough to do this.

Stop thinking you will do this perfect. You can’t. You will fail. It’s ok. Take a breath. Failure is full of opportunity if you let it unfold. Don’t hate your failure. Hate your fear.

Don’t listen to those who come only to tear you down, including those thoughts inside of yourself. They come only to keep you intimidated from unlocking your full potential.

People will look at you and judge how you live. Let them look. Let them judge. But don’t perform for them. Don’t try to be anything. Just be you.

You will doubt yourself but don’t for long. 

Press on and don’t stop. Ever. 

Stop looking around for other people to tell you that you are worthy. Stop it! You are worthy. It is not your husbands’, friends’, families’, or anyone else’s job to give you worth. You must find it yourself and own it. No one else can give it to you.

You are a wife now, you are not a trophy. You were not meant to be put on a shelf or in a box. You only need to be you. You are enough.

Remember to never compare your life to those around you. Your life will never look like “their” life. Ever. You can’t be them. You suck at being them. (Just trust me on this.) You, be you. It is the only person you can rock. So rock it.

Your life can be every bit of adventure that you predict; however, your adventure will be lived through the years of time. Your days may feel long, but your years will fly by.

Marriage is often entered with the thoughts of companionship, but there are days that marriage can feel very isolating. Don’t stay in isolation for long. Life must be lived with others. Don’t allow yourself to stay in seclusion. Reach out. Please. Seek support. 

Be resolute in not living a life full of secrets. It is not worth it.

Marriage can feel beautiful, wonderful, exhausting, difficult, horrible, exciting and can be the absolute best experience in this life. If possible, don't give up.

I pray that your husband is a kind, respectful, honest partner for you to live beside. However, no matter who he chooses to be. Remember not to lose yourself in your partnership. Never allow yourself to disappear. You are essential to this world.

We need you to be you.

Much love and many blessings, Haley

Home Sweet Home {One Year Later}

One year ago, today, our home caught on fire. 

Thankfully, it was not a total loss. Just the walls, part of the roof, our ceilings, insulation, cabinets, doors, windows, and a good chunk of our stuff. 

The home we had remodeled for five months quickly turned into a total gut job. Awesome. 

Fast forward seven months and we were able to move into our home again. This time everything was brand new and quite lovely. 

We moved back into our house the exact same week that we bought our house last year, the last week of April. How is that for coincidence? Haha. It was the week after I turned THIRTY. I told Carter that I have now been “given” a house two years in a row for my birthday, so I have a pretty high bar for next year. Haha! Actually, to be honest, the only thing I would like for my birthday next year is to NOT move into ANY house!

We are home and we are so very happy.

We are settled, our house is decorated and every box is unpacked. Our garage is even cleaned out. (And some people don’t believe in miracles!)

We did it.

Our home is finished and quite beautiful. Did you hear that? FINISHED! Who knew that we would ever say that?! 

It took us a LONG time to get here but we have arrived. We have had so many work days on this house, pre-fire and post-fire. 

When the day finally came to move in, we had the kids stay the night with their grandparents and we finished moving into our house without telling them!  Carter and I loaded the rest of our furniture and whatever I could fit into my van. (Why do I not think moving boxes are necessary??? Because I am an idiot. That's why.)

We unloaded our furniture, just the two of us, into our completely restored home. To be honest, we have dozens of people that would have been happy to help us with our FINAL move in, but it was therapeutic to do it ourselves. Well, for me at least. I loved bringing every single item into our home and deciding where it should belong.

We set up our furniture, made beds and set up the kids’ playroom. I wanted my kids to instantly feel at home when they walked in. No more being unsettled.

The next morning we brought them HOME. They were so surprised!  It was amazing.

Within ten minutes, Mayliss had found the nail polish and was going wild with it. (Not surprising.) And within thirty minutes, Shep had gone missing. Upon doing a quick search, I found him alone in his bedroom with his Army guys scattered everywhere.

My heart was happy.

We were home.

We moved home at the end of April and I took a break from my writing and Social Media to focus on my family and getting us settled back into our normal lives. Whatever normal is?

Each day as I have organized and decorated I have tried to process the past year of our lives.

What in the world happened?

Things did not go as we planned. That's what happened. We had a plan, but our plan was taken from us. Without notice we found ourselves with a different path. We had no choice but to accept this *new plan*, but the process felt very disappointing.  Funny enough, we actually became more excited with the new plan than our original one. Which is wonderful, but it did not make the experience any easier.

This past year was exhausting.

We had many moments of disappointment and discouragement. It was challenging and very stretching to feel so unsettled with our family of five for an entire year.

I have finally come up with the perfect word to sum up everything we went through this past year…

Life.

Life happened.

This is it. In all of its glory. Life brings us plans that we don’t want, but we have to take. I have learned that my life is much better if I choose to be appreciative of what I have instead of focused on everything I don't.

This life hands us things that we don’t expect and we didn’t ask for. We don’t get to pick what we are given, but we do get to pick how we play our hand. We may not always love what we have been dealt, but let's not forget to enjoy the game.

I will leave you with some pictures of our beautiful home...

Blessings my friends. -Haley

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It Doesn't Hurt Us to Wait

During the first few days after our house fire I could not quite pin-point what I was most upset about. Before this, I always thought the most difficult part of a house fire (without injuries) was the loss of “stuff”, but for me the hardest part wasn’t the stuff. The stuff was just stuff.

Two weeks before it happened we had decided we would officially finish being in “remodel” mode. We had a long list of projects still to-do, but we knew it was time to settle in and begin to live life again. One more “big” project and then we would be done with the biggest parts of our remodel.

Like most of us, we have had to wait for many things in our lives. For us, this house represented so many of our dreams finally coming true. We have long desired to have a house in the country, with a little bit of land, the kids and the pets. In many ways, we felt like we had “arrived” somewhere we had been trying to get for the past ten years. Finally.

It was time to rest.

When our house went up in smoke I felt like more was taken from us than our stuff. I felt like I was watching both my future and my past go up in flames. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wanted to be in my house. I wanted to be living my dream. I didn’t want to wait anymore.

 I wanted my dream now… not later.

 I felt like we had arrived at the finish line and someone was asking us to start the race back from the beginning. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do it all again. Did I even have it in me? Honestly, at first, I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to know.

I knew that eventually everything would work out. I knew we would regain everything we had lost, but I knew it wouldn’t be today. It was the time that I felt we had lost and the time I felt we had to wait that seemed more than I could bear.

“It doesn’t hurt us to wait.”

I have probably said this a hundred times to my kids. But truthfully, at times, I am telling myself just as much as I am telling them. Why in the world is waiting so damn hard?

Waiting is simply being. Waiting gives us an opportunity to rest. But often times we don’t choose to rest, we choose to become restless. In the world we live in, waiting and resting are under-rated. Many of us don’t know how to rest and we don’t understand the value of it.

It is funny because I was looking forward to a season of rest and now I am in one. Of course, it’s not like I expected it to look.

Welcome to life, Haley, it is full of surprises.

Sure, my home is completely gutted… well… besides the room of ash. But hey, we have been given a wonderful place to live while we wait. We have had every single need met and more. We have been reminded that we have the most amazing people in our lives that have been here to support us through every step. We have each other. We are doing great.

I will now use this time as an opportunity to learn how to wait better and rest deeper. I am reminded again that my happiness in this life has little to do with my desires being fulfilled and everything to do with my willingness to appreciate what I have been given.

Sure, I have lost my house for now. But I’ll get it back.

Let me tell you though, I will not be waiting until then to

“live the dream”.

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