Last Sunday was Mothers day and when I think of motherhood (one of the best kinds of hoods), the first things that come to me are birthing and nurturing. And although this article was inspired by those two aspects of motherhood, the audience it is addressed to is not limited by factors such as the ability to physically give birth and the innate ability/inclination of women to be nurturers. I started writing this article thinking of mothers but quickly realized that it was meant to speak to the divine ability that God has put in each and everyone of us to birth and nurture our visions and dreams.
The birthing of a vision can be painful and more or less long, a little bit at the image of the labor as a woman is about to give birth. And just like with birthing a baby, it doesn't always happen on our timeline and/or terms; no matter how much we try and how much efforts we put into it. As good people and/or Christians, although we have been trained/raised to praise God for what He does for other people, there is always the "why not me" sting and the silent sobs that quickly catch up to us in the quiet moments. Transparency moment: I have been through this. I have traveled down this road and felt the heartbreak when I did everything I could possibly do, prayed every prayer I could possibly pray and yet, "it" didn't happen for me. Yes I am a Christian and I have heard countless times sermons on trusting God's sovereign plan and timing, especially when things don't go my way. But beyond the inner, spiritual being, there is also the human part that feels heartbroken and aches over every broken and/or dead dream and/or vision that never come to pass
These past days, I have spent a lot of time in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And as I progressed through these books, God helped understand that not all broken dreams should be discarded and not all dead dreams should be buried. But most importantly, He reminded me that even if we bury those dreams, He can still bring them back to life like He did times and times again in the Bible because, between me and you: He is still that God.
So let me give a little context to the book of Nehemiah before I get to the heart of my article: Israel is taken into exile in Babylon but a few of them remain in Jerusalem. Nehemiah who is one of the exiles, inquires of those left behind to new comers and wants to know how is Jerusalem doing. And of course, the answers to both questions is BAD. So Nehemiah seeks God and then, while attending to the King, asks him permission to return to Judah for a while so that he could rebuild the city (mainly the wall and the Temple as noted in Nehemiah and Ezra respectively). With the king's approval, Nehemiah got started on the vision/ mission God had put on his heart to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and the Temple.
The ruins and rubles depicted in these two books (two books= two different accounts of the same story) represent what is left of the "old" glory (the things we had and lost) but also our dead dreams and lost hope. Ezra, Nehemiah and the other men going back to rebuild the Temple and the Wall of Jerusalem represent those of us that God is calling to go back to the broken dreams in order to rebuild them alongside to the people He has appointed for us to successfully carry the mission to completion. Considering that the mission came from God, we might assume that it would be a walk in the park but it is quite the opposite: this mission was full of threats, deceit and I am sure times where Nehemiah wanted to give up otherwise he wouldn't have prayed to God for strength (Nehe 6:6). Dealing with broken dreams/ lost hope can feel the same: it can bare the same dangers/ threats and the weight of it might, at time, make us feel like it is too much to handle. The triage and sorting, the cleaning and de-cluttering can be overwhelming for us but as much as it is for us, it isn't so to God. All we have to do is ask God for strength the way Nehemiah did and go back to the vision surrounded by the right people.
God used this devotional through the books of Nehemiah and Ezra to remind me that He is the God that can make something beautiful out of the ruins if we let Him. This reminder didn't necessarily take the pain away, but it helped me realize that sometimes, the dreams have to be shattered so that God can rearrange the pieces in a way that best suits his plan - whether it means removing pieces to make room for other things or adding more pieces in order to bring us to the realization that He can do "exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or imagine" (Eph 3:20). It also helped replace the grief with hope as I came to the realization that just because some of my dreams are broken, it doesn't mean that God can't use them. More importantly, journeying through those two books helped put in perspective the fact that the place where the ruins and chaos lay today can be (and will be) home to something beautiful in the time appointed by God; home to something that has more weight and glory than what was (Hag 2:9), home to something that will one day make me forget the trials and tribulations I ever had to walk through.
God also reminded me that the early stages of going back to those dreams, picking them up from the recycling bin and starting to work on them again might look like nothing; but just because it does look like nothing, doesn't mean that nothing is happening. When Elijah told Ahab that he had to eat and leave because the rain was coming, it wasn't raining yet. Elijah went to pray on the Carmel then sent his servant to look for any sign of rain. His servant went and looked again and again until the seventh time and even when he saw the cloud, he told Elijah it is just a small cloud. Those times where Elijah's servant went to look and saw nothing, there was something happening, it just wasn't visible until it was. And what he called a "small cloud" was what brought a "huge cloudburst" (1 kings 18: 41-46).
You might probably be tired. You might have probably given up on your dreams and if you're anything like me, you might have scoffed at a few of them as you angrily threw them in the trash can. But God is moving them to the recycling bin and He is saying "Go back and rebuild it.Go back to the dead ones. The ones that seem like nothing can come out of them again. The ones you thought couldn't be salvaged. Go back to them and pick them up for I will breathe life into them again. Go back to your dreams and start working on them again." (Eze 37)
And it is okay if you can't right now. If you're too tired. If you have no strength. Rest here for a little bit. Catch your breath, cry if you must. And when you have done all of this and some more, go back to those dreams and try again, this time with God.
Until next time,
