Grieving the Death of a Dream
What's included: a video clip from the episode; a poem to ponder; a song to listen to; an article to read (written by 17-year-old Taylor!); three questions to reflect on
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Have you ever felt like God broke his promise to you?
Grief and pain come to us all, and sometimes they come through shattered dreams: when life crumbles, and with it, the God you thought you knew.
In the disorientation and confusion of what grief can be, we can experience a death without a funeral. Those unseen, unclear deaths of ideals, expectations, hopes, and even versions of ourselves. How do we mark those losses? And how do we stay resilient through them?
In this episode, my friend Melissa’s joins me to share about her family’s move to Togo, West Africa as missionaries, and their excruciating decision to return to the US just a few years later. It’s beautiful, painful story about the shattering of a dream, and of relearning to trust the heart of God when life feels dark. I hope you’ll listen in:
A clip from the podcast episode:
Melissa and I talk a lot about expectations. We talk about our expectations versus God’s expectations. We also talk about expectations from others, and even larger societal or religious pressures, that can shape our perceptions of who we should be or what our lives should look like.
I love the following 1-minute clip from the episode.
Can you think back to a situation in your life that was similar? Perhaps you obeyed a specific call from God with so many hopes, dreams, and expectations… and then it was hard. Maybe even excruciating.
You watched those expectations unravel, one-by-one. What did you do with these unfulfilled longings and disappointments?
A poem to ponder:
Growing up as a missionary kid in East Asia, I personally resonated with so much from this episode. I especially related to Melissa’s feelings of failure, shame, and not-enoughness that surfaced when her whole world “died.” How do you begin to process the enormity of this kind of loss, especially when it remains largely unnoticed by others?
When I was in high-school, I read the following poem written by a fellow MK. These 15 lines spoke the language of my own grief with such accuracy.
Mock Funeral by Alex Graham Jones
There was no funeral.
No flowers.
No ceremony.
No one had died.
No weeping or wailing.Just in my heart.
I can’t…
But I did anyway.
And nobody knew I couldn’t.I don’t want to…
But nobody else said they didn’t.So put down my panic
And I picked up my luggage
And I got on the plane.There was no funeral.
Do you resonate with any particular idea or line from this poem? Perhaps your grief didn’t look like picking up luggage and getting on a plane, but you can resonate with squaring your shoulders to face a different hard thing…and the losses that you still carry inside of you haven’t been fully seen or named.
A song to listen to:
I was 9 when my family moved cross-culturally. (This is a picture that was taken at the airport when we first arrived in Japan).
Our transition reflected Melissa and her family’s transition in many ways: Hard. Isolating. Far different than what we expected. This song by Matt Redman was one of my family’s favorites during this time.
What a beautiful reminder that, whatever painful road we might be walking, God is walking with us. Even when our circumstances seem to fall out from beneath us, we are always being carried by constant grace. We are never walking alone.
An article to read:
Writing has always been the way that I process what’s going on inside of me. I started writing for publication when I was 13 (which led to my first book, Hidden in My Heart: A TCK’s Journey Through Cultural Transition). During high-school, I wrote dozens of articles for different online platforms and books about the lives of missionary kids.
One article I wrote for the missions’s website, A Life Overseas, went viral. It was titled “10 Questions Missionary Kids Would Love to Be Asked.” I wrote the article after one of my family’s home assignments while reflecting on the following paradox:
Over a several month trip of visiting my family’s supporting churches, I had been asked hundreds of questions. Ironically, I left my passport country feeling unknown. How is it possible to feel so exposed, yet so unseen? Have you ever felt this way?
I’m amazed to hear how this article is still being read and utilized in the mission’s community today.
Read the article here.
3 questions to reflect on:
Every Wednesday, I offer you three questions to reflect on from the podcast episode. This week, I’d love to invite you to consider the following questions:
Have you ever experienced an unseen, unclear death that had no funeral (ideals, expectations, hopes)?
What are some expectations that you feel, perhaps from yourself or others? Are these God’s expectations for you?
When you reflect on your life so far, what have been some of the most painful disappointments? What might it be like to write a prayer/letter to God telling Him about them?
I pray these resources are an encouragement!
Journeying together,
Taylor Joy
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Currently in the thick of a shattered dream. Thank you for this