I was just waking up. I had fallen a sleep as my husband drove us out of Connemara National Park, just north of Galway, Ireland. We now were on a narrow road, shadowed by leafy green trees. My husband had his music playing (I say his because I hadn’t heard of the artist before), and when he saw I was up he asked me if I was feeling better. I had felt a little car sick earlier. I groggily told him that I thought I was better, and then this song came on.

It was what I now know as Brandon Flowers’ Between Me and You, and it is all about losing your dreams. When it comes to music, my husband and I always talk about how he hears the music of a song first, and I hear the words. So when Flowers sang the chorus:

“And all my life, I’ve been told

Follow your dreams, but the trail went cold

And the heart don’t lie and that’s a good luck charm

But I’m watching it tear out of my arms…”

I started tearing up almost immediately, because:

I had lost a dream.

At eighteen years old, I had discovered the thing that made me feel the most alive I have ever been. It made my face light up when I’d talk about it. It made me feel energized even when I had little sleep. It was what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing—and I thought I was going to. Only to make this thing a career meant being a part of a system that had very little room for women and some ideas about how things should be done, that were different from mine.

For over seven years I worked the best I could in this system, until finally I felt so emotionally beat up and exhausted that I had to leave. Then, after taking sometime to heal and refresh, I looked for other similar opportunities only to be told in various ways that I need not apply. My dream that felt so much a part of who I was, was dying. But I didn’t know how to express the sorrow and grieving that was going on inside of me.

I had been trying to search for exactly the right words to describe what had happened—and what was happening to me. I had sat on my best friend’s couch for hours during the past three years, saying the same things over and over, but none of them were enough. Then, that afternoon in Ireland, there was this song, playing in the car as we drove through winding country roads—and it was saying everything.

When our dreams die, they tear out a piece of us and take it with them. It feels as if our hearts have betrayed us by letting us care so much about something that didn’t last. Our sense of direction gets all screwy, like a compass that can’t make up its mind. And it isn’t until we begin to let go that we experience some relief.

The death of my dream not only affected me, but it also affected my husband. It affected our day to day, it made him angry too (not at me but for me), and it made it difficult for us to move forward. In Between Me and You, after sharing all the brokenness of a lost dream, Flowers sings:

“But I’m doing my best not to let it get…Between me and you”

As the song played out of the speaker of our little European rental car that afternoon, tears started to roll down my cheeks. Focused on the road, I am not sure my husband noticed until, when it ended, in a choked up voice, I told him it was a beautiful song. Then, because he had been listening to the music, I told him about the words. I told him that I was thankful for him walking with me, and helping me keep this loss from dividing us.

Dreams are powerful things. Alive, they propel us forward. Dead, they leave us shattered. But the beautiful thing is that even when your greatest dream dies, your life is not over. Though it feels as if everything is ending, the reality is that room is being made for new, and possibly even bigger dreams.

Between Me and You, helped me grieve. It helped me continue the hard process of moving on. And though I never would have guessed that the healing process would take this long, I can tell you there is life on the other side of a dead dream. So if you are grieving the loss of what you thought your future would look like—between me and you, there is hope.

What dreams have you lost?

What has helped you dream again?

For this Thursday’s Love Learn Lead post, I am going to share with you a few things that helped me through the grieving process and onto dreaming again. Hope you will join us.

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