Disappointment, Discouragement, Disillusionment

My family and I are taking a class at church using Dream Journey by Andy & Janine Mason. I didn’t know about the class before I chose my One Word. It gives me a great opportunity to work through some of my issues with dreaming. Sometimes I feel like I need a daily course instead of weekly. The topic of what to do with dead dreams brought many insights.

When a dream dies we are affected by disappointment, then discouragement, and maybe even disillusionment. 

Disappointment can mean not meeting expectations or being removed from office. Dreams die for a number of reasons. Things didn’t turn out like expected. People didn’t understand or cooperate. We are hurt. We question who we are and what we are supposed to be doing. “Who am I?” “What am I appointed for?” “Have I been removed from my appointment?” 

Discouragement is the lack of courage. We can’t go after God’s dreams without courage. When a dream dies it may seem like it took all our courage with it. It didn’t work this time, do I really want to try again? It doesn’t seem to be working, do I want to go on?

Disillusionment is filled with confusion. It’s a hope stealer, sometimes even a faith killer. Who am I? What am I doing? Did I misunderstand God’s plan or purpose? What do I do now? Why try again?

I think processing, dealing with; healing from dead dream restores hope, courage and sense of purpose. It may even resurrect a dead dream.

Your dream may not be dead. It may just appear dead to you because you had an expected outcome or an expected route to travel. Part of that disillusionment. God’s plan may be quite different than ours. There may be an element of the dream God gave you that you then took off with and missed where He intended you to go. God’s results don’t always look like ours. God may indeed have given the dream, but without all the details. I think of Bruce Olson, a missionary to the Motilone people of Columbia. He had a love for languages. He thought he was meant to go to lots of schooling to use that love a languages. God gave him a commission to the Motilone people. He couldn’t even understand them. Eventually God used Bruce’s love and knowledge of languages to help the Motilone’s write down their language and translate the scriptures for them to read. It was God’s dream, but did not look the way Bruce expected. There were certainly times he thought he's dream was dead and so was he, for that matter.

We must work through our disappointment, discouragement, and disillusionment. More on processing a dead dream next week.