The Dream Is Dead

I once wrote an article about my attempt at running a few years ago.  I still meet people who say upon meeting me, "aren't you the one who runs."  To which I have to say, "Well, I did.  I mean, I do, kind of."  I've enjoyed running off and on throughout the years.  I have this dream, this hope, that one day something will switch inside of me.  I'll be the amazing runner, able to run 5ks or more and I will lose all of this weight, as some of my friends who have found a love of running.

I've just never actually had that happen to me.  With my recent little tumble down the stairs, I now have very little meniscal cartilage in my right knee and I have to face a new reality.  Running is probably not a good idea moving forward. No more trampoline exercise classes I'd started doing recently.  It's just not smart for the future.  There are a lot of wonderful other things I can do but as a colleague was recently talking about his hopes of running a marathon, I realized I have to let some dreams die.

As I have grown and changed as a person I have had to allow some dreams to die.  I recently wrote about a season of life in which I had "to grieve the person I was never going to be."  I had this vision of what I would become when I grew up and that vision never became reality.  Something much more wonderful came in its place, but I had to allow the other dream to die and give myself space to grieve it's passing in order to move on.

People have to do that sometimes.  Face reality and grieve the loss of what will never be.  Organizations too have to realize when the future is not what they thought or face the fact that the future will never look like the past.  Something more wonderful can spring forth but sometimes we have to let dreams and visions die.  We have to give ourselves space to really grieve but then we can let hope spring forth and allow something new, something different, maybe even something more wonderful than we could have imagined, be birthed.