Nov 4th, 2016

Three years ago on this day, I sat on my living room couch in my snack-stained bathrobe and messy bedhead bun – on what should have been one of the happiest days of my life – only feeling confused and disappointed.

I remember thinking, this is not at all what I imagined this would be like. I thought I would feel…..different. I thought I would feel something at least.

Anything but the way I did.

It was launch day for my first book, Now What? A Story of Broken Dreams and the God Who Restores Them. This was the culmination of a six-year journey. The achievement of a dream I had held in my heart since the third grade. The pinnacle moment for the project I had poured every bit of myself into for the last four years.

And I felt nothing.

The night before, I had been up late waiting to push “publish” on the Amazon CreateSpace platform that would send my words to every corner of the globe with an internet connection.

As the second hand tipped over the minute line and the clock struck midnight, I pushed that button with great expectation – as if my whole world would magically transform in an instant. When a confirmation page loaded on the browser I thought, well that was anticlimactic.

I walked around in a daze that Friday.

My book launch party was still a week away; there was still plenty to do, so I threw myself into the last-minute details of that and convinced myself that on that day – surrounded by my closest friends and family, toasting lattes to my accomplishment – I would finally feel that mountaintop moment of arrival I was expecting.

But November 11^th came and went, and while I relished every moment of celebrating the milestone, surrounded by my biggest cheerleaders, nothing changed on the inside of me.

In fact, I plummeted so fast and so far south on my emotional rollercoaster, I felt more disenchantment than elation. Disillusionment than excitement.

I checked the sales report every morning for weeks – expecting to see numbers in the thousands. When it barely tipped over 60 copies in the first month, I was in a full-on depression.

What was happening?

If God really called me to write this book, and He opened all the doors for me to put it out in the world like He did, wouldn’t He also cause it to fly off the shelves?Wouldn’t He want as many copies in the hands of as many people as possible? Wouldn’t He want to make it a best-seller?

Did I hear Him wrong? Is this my fault? What’s wrong with me?

Then came the shame. Mountains and oceans of shame.

Shouldn’t Jesus be enough?

I mean, sure, those “lost” people out in the world deal with feeling unfulfilled, but not Christians, right?

I mean, I literally learned this lesson in junior high youth group: Every human on earth is walking around with a Jesus-sized hole inside them. Most people go around trying to fill it up with relationships, or sex, or drugs and alcohol. But once you “get saved” and “have Jesus”, all that goes away.

…Then why did I still have a hole?

What I have learned in the last three years is that achievement is empty. Achievement alone.

Even if it is the achievement of something good.

Even if it is something God called you to.

Even if it is in ministry.

Even if your heart is pure.

And no body prepared me for this.

No one ever told me that people inside the church – even inside ministry – can still feel emptiness in their souls.

I had enough foresight to see that if accomplishing the number one goal in my life made me feel this hollow, than any other goal I set from here would only result in the same cavernous hole. And I needed to do something about it.

So I set out on a journey. To wrestle with God about the ideas of success and accomplishment I held so deeply. To seek to understand the balance between expectation and contentment. Striving and satisfaction.

And it’s been great!

And scary. And fulfilling. And challenging. And burden-lifting. And freeing. And seemingly never-ending.

But, I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m starting to grasp some firm answers and see through the fogginess to clarity.

It’s time to start talking about it. I’m excited to begin sharing this journey with you.

If you’ve ever been disappointed by a dream come true, I hope you’ll come along with me.

What to do with the Death of a Dream

Have you ever given up on a dream? Has life ever beaten you up or beaten you down so badly, you felt it was pointless to believe in a better or different future?

In my book Now What? A Story of Broken Dreams and the God Who Restores Them, I talk about how after my divorce in 2011, I felt like my life was ruined. Like I had blown my chance at the dream life I pictured in my head, by mistakenly marrying the wrong person, and would just have to settle for whatever second-rate existence I could get from thereon.

A divorce is not only the death of a relationship, but the death of a dream.

And I have found the mourning process to be much the same as mourning the loss of a human being.

Have you ever found yourself in a place like this? It’s daunting, discouraging…depressing even.

There’s a verse in Proverbs that says,
“Where there is no vision, the people perish…”

My mentors once explained to me that everyone starts out with a big “dream circle” when they are young. We are all going to be astronauts and professional athletes and Broadway stars when we’re 6 – even 16 – but somewhere along the way to becoming an adult, responsibilities and bills and routine take ahold of us, and our dream circle shrinks to fit the reality of the life we are living.

Or, for some of us, a life-altering event shakes us out of the perpetual state of hope and optimism we have always known until all we can do is survive each day.

We stop being able to see more than what is right in front of us. Our dream dies. And we just exist.

That’s where I was.

I share this story in my book:

I have always had “vision boards” up in my bedroom. I was probably sixteen when I pasted together and hung my first one. I’ve moved them to every apartment and house I have ever lived in (and I’ve moved a lot!). I hung them when I was first on my own, living in a low-income apartment. At a time when I would often only have ten dollars left over at the end of the week for groceries, looking at those boards inspired me to keep dreaming.

Right in front of me I saw the pictures of the types of houses I wanted to live in, the cars I wanted to drive, the places I wanted to see, and the intangible things—children to adopt, relationships I would have, the impact I would make. And I was reminded that where I was, was not where I was staying. My circumstances and surroundings were only temporary as long as I kept moving forward.

The first place I lived after my divorce, I didn’t hang my vision boards up. I felt so far removed from those pictures, from ever seeing those dreams come to fruition. I just couldn’t see how that life was possible anymore.

When Barry and I moved into our first house together, I pulled them all out and cried. I still wasn’t sure I believed in them, but I was more disheartened that I had given up on dreaming all together.

When I shared this with Barry, he went out and bought fresh poster board and insisted we make new ones together.

Even though my old ones still had some things on them I liked, they were from a totally different place in my life. I took a couple things from them, but I wanted a new vision board to match the new vision in my life.

That’s the power of vision boards. When you constantly have the images of what you want your life to look like in front of your eyes, your imagination and subconscious mind go to work to make those things manifest in the physical realm. They will find a way, attracting ideas and people and opportunities to you.

While creating my new vision board, I found this one small quote I cut out of a magazine that meant the most to me. I don’t even remember what it was in reference to, but it said,

“Your dreams miss you.”

I get emotional just typing that now. Those four words were such a simple, sweet reminder to me that I was called and created for more than the complacency I was settling for.

I had dreams inside me just waiting to get out, but I had allowed myself to move far away from them. I had forgotten them, left them behind. I’d buried them in my day-to-day routine and busyness to keep my mind off what I had been through and the fact that I was stagnant in life.

My dreams missed me.

And I missed them.

Your dreams miss you.

I give you permission to dream again.

The next chapter of your life hasn’t been written yet and it matters how you finish. Live on purpose and scream to the world, ‘It’s not over till I win!’” – Pastor Gary Newell

So, if you’re in that place where hope seems lost and dreams seem dead, create a vision board for yourself.
When is the last time you let yourself dream? Given yourself permission to imagine life a different way?

I have always heard, if you want to get a big dream, get around big dreamers. Believe it or not, there are people in your life who see your potential more clearly than you do. Find those people. Spend time with them.

Whatever you do, do not lose sight of that vision, that hope – that your life can be better, fuller, more-fulfilling, more-purposeful than it is now.

As cliché as it sounds, you have seeds of greatness inside of you. I beg you, do not let them get buried in busyness and routine and monotony. Or disappointments, heartache and loss. Keep your dreams in the forefront of your mind, put pictures of them in front of you. And you will see them come to pass.

your dreams miss you.jpg

The Year God Stopped Talking to Me

New year’s day 2016 I sat on my living room couch, face red-stained and eyes puffy from hours of crying, my voice half-strained from screaming – at God – in particularly colorful language at times.

Why?

Because it was New Year’s Day and as I sat down to reflect on the previous year and craft my plans and goals for the next, I realized 2015…..Well…..sucked.

Sure there were good things in 2015. In fact, on the outside it looked like a GREAT year:
We bought our first house.
Barry left his job where he was miserable and went into business with his Dad.
We took my my mom on an incredible trip to Hawaii for her 60th birthday.
I finished the last chapter of my book
Started a blog and author social media pages
Began my public speaking career…..

But behind the scenes:
The first two months in our new house Barry and I fought more than we had in the first five years of our relationship – combined.
Barry’s new arrangement with his dad happened a little prematurely than they planned and put a lot of pressure on both of them. Which caused Barry to be tense and irritable and led to us fighting more.
The second day of our incredible Hawaii trip, I got a call that my high school best friend overdosed on heroin and died and I spent most the trip bouncing back and forth between laughing and enjoying the present moment and crying after being blindsided by another memory of him.
I was told blogging and creating a social media following was necessary for building a platform for a book release. But once I started, they only added extra work and mental energy to my already overflowing plate. Which caused me to feel exhausted and (you guessed it) led to us fighting more.
My new speaking career was also happening earlier than I anticipated – it felt overwhelming and intimidating to me, like I was in over my head. I constantly questioned if I was ready or qualified for the task at hand, leaving me feeling insecure and vulnerable.

The fact that all of these things happened within a three month timespan caused so much stress, tension, and anxiety in my life – and my body- it literally almost broke my gallbladder.

I experienced excruciating pain that resulted getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night, for months. It was so bad I almost went to the emergency room on more than one occasion. I lived in fear of every meal I ate because I never knew what was going to hurt me and what wasn’t. For about a month, I ate nothing but rotisserie chicken and apples, since I knew those were two things that would not cause pain.

Sure, there were good things that came as a result of the bad things:
My alarming health challenge caused Barry and I to stop fighting. I had never felt his love as tangibly as I did in those months, as he cared for me, sat up with me, rubbed the soreness out of my back from being hunched over for hours, stayed up with me, and prayed for me.
He took over as the spiritual leader in our home, standing in the gap for me as I struggled with doubt, uncertainty and fear.
These things aroused a great respect and admiration in me for him, and caused me to fall more deeply in love with him than I ever had been.

Days leading up to New Year’s, I couldn’t stop reminding myself that the ONE thing I did want to get accomplished in 2015 – publishing my book – didn’t happen.

I literally had a single goal, a single dream, a single resolution for two-thousand-fifteen: to put my book on physical (and digital) bookshelves and into hands of people who so desperately need it.
And it. didn’t. happen.

I felt like a total failure. Like I had wasted an entire year of my life.

And, in the midst of aaaaallllll that, God was completely, and utterly, silent. He had been for months at that point.

For countless nights I sat up in hours of pain, I had been pleading with God to show Himself to me. To show me the purpose in any of this.

I had reasoned if the manifestation of my healing wasn’t happening physically immediately, then there must be something I was supposed to be learning in the meantime. Something God wanted to teach me in this place of waiting.

I began asking Him what that was and let Him know I was fully open and joyfully on-board with learning whatever the lesson. Honestly.

Awaiting a reply, I got: NOTHING.
Not a peep.
Nada.
Zilch.
Not a single word

And then, our basement flooded.

That’s when the crying started.

It was New Year’s Eve. As we sat at home, instead of out ringing in the new year with our friends, dismantling drywall and sucking water out with a carpet shampooer, the weight of everything just hit me. I reached my breaking point. And enough tears to fill our basement a second time came spilling out of me.

I began crying out to God again.

If you’re going to make me go through all of this, at least tell me what I’m supposed to be learning! What I’m supposed to be getting out of it!! I shouted at Him.

Still nothing.

I don’t deserve this! I am being so faithful. Do you not see me? Are you not paying attention? Look at me!! What more do you want from me?!

[I began to feel a little like the bi-polar David in Psalms: “I love you Lord, your eyes are always upon me, you have blessed me abundantly.” Very next verse, “God, why do you hate me? My enemies are about to destroy me, why aren’t you watching?!”]

More silence.

And that’s when I got angry.

By New Year’s day, I was yelling most of the same things – just use your imagination to insert expletives in the middle of every sentence. (I guess I had moved on to a little bit of Job at that point….)

Now, what would make this story really great is if this is the part where I tell you, “and then God’s voice boomed audibly into my living room and said, ‘Rachel, oh ye of little faith, I Am still right here.’”

But that’s not what happened.

In fact, I had to sit on this blog for several months because my prayers for a Word and an understanding remained unanswered.

This was the first time since becoming a Christian – really becoming a Christian, since God had pursued me and I met Him in a real and intimate way five years ago – that I wasn’t hearing from Him, that I couldn’t feel Him close to me.

I had relegated myself to the thought that I was just in spiritual dry/desert season and would have to wait it out. (You can read about the desert season here: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/deserts)

But Now…..The Rest of the Story

A couple months prior to my New Year’s Day meltdown, a friend reached out to me asking me if I could recommend any specific scripture to help her through a current rough season. I told her, “That’s not really the way my relationship with God works – I hear from Him in songs, and books about Him, or books about the Bible, or even from Him directly (in my mind).” I recommended some songs that really helped me when I was in the same place, and a couple books she could read. And went on about my day.

See, I had tried reading the Bible all the way through, more than once, without success. And anytime I was dealing with something specific, I tried flipping to the concordance to find verses that applied to my own situation, but I always turned up empty – the verses would feel disconnected from what I was going through, so I gave up on that.

Whenever I needed an answer about something, I picked up a Christian book on the topic or found a preacher teaching a message about it to get my answer.

In those weeks of silence while battling my gallbladder symptoms, I began reading a book a friend had recommended to me. It was a topical study Bible called, “The Complete Personalized Promise Bible for Women”. I planned on using it for reference to find healing scriptures to meditate on, but I started with page 1 of the introduction and I’m glad I did. It hooked me, and I started reading it as a daily devotional of sorts.

For each section/topic, there is a promise, a faith confession for that promise, then scriptures backing up the confession.

While studying there, I came across this verse in 2^nd Thessalonians: “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold on to the teachings passed on to you, whether by word of mouth OR BY LETTER.”

I started laughing as it occurred to me Paul was writing to the early church in Thessalonica; those people were getting their messages from God in written letters, via Paul.

And in that moment Paul’s letter was to me saying: “God has written a letter to you. Stand firm and hold on to the things He wrote down 2,000 years ago.”

The next day as I sat writing in my prayer journal, praising God for using that verse to speak to me, I started laughing again as another revelation came: The Bible is called “God’s Word” – literally God’s Words. The Words He spoke to the people He loved. He had already said plenty to me, and it was all written down and recorded, preserved in time, so I could revisit it anytime I wanted or needed.

I was humbled. How arrogant of me to expect Him to talk to me, when I want, in the manner I want?

All that time I was in the desert, He was talking to me right in those pages, but I wasn’t receiving it. I wasn’t even looking in the right place!

How many tears (and angry words), how much stress and heartache, would I have saved myself if I had only looked there earlier? How different could the year 2015 have been?

God – thanks for never leaving us, and never forsaking us. Thanks for loving us enough to send and leave Your Word for us. And thanks for your everlasting and unconditional grace that we can never ever use up, because we need it – big time.

Deserts

Lately I’ve been feeling….dry.

And by “lately” I mean for like the last 6 months. And by “dry” I mean a little dead on the inside. Spiritually.

I have heard about spiritual desert seasons people go through. When they feel distant from God.

And I’ve seen the cheesy church signs that say things like:
“Feeling distant from God?
Who moved – you or Him?”

Thanks for that extra guilt and shame, church sign. In a time when I already feel lost and confused.

The fact of the matter is, I have been marching steadily toward the purpose and the mission to which God has called me. Not away from it or Him. So why do I feel so….blah?

At the beginning, when I started, when I was writing my book and right after I finished, when I started to tell people about it, and started telling my story, every day was exciting and new!! Filled with limitless potential! Every day was fulfilling. I had so much to get out and I watched people’s lives change right in front of me.

But now, I struggle with the feeling that maybe I’ve given all I had to give? Maybe now I’m all used up and empty. Dried out. Do I have anything left to offer people?

I feel guilty for not reading as much lately as I should be. I know my growth is directly related to how much I’m reading. But the hunger I had the Summer before I wrote my book – the Summer I devoured sixteen other books on marriage, divorce and remarriage in four months – has waned….no, disappeared. And I don’t know why.

I don’t even know what I would want to learn about next.
And I don’t want to only keep reading and studying marriage and relationships, I want to be able to offer more than that. Plus, I feel like I’ve said everything I have to say about that, in my book.

…..Which still isn’t published.

And that is what makes me feel the most drained and dry.

I’ve passed all three goals and deadlines I gave myself to get it out. I thought surely I’d be passing it on the shelf at Barnes & Noble by now. But I’m stiiiilllll editing. Which is not exciting, or new, or life-giving. It sucks every ounce of energy and enthusiasm I have for my book right out of me.

It took me 3 months to write my book, and I’ve been editing for 9. And I’m not even done with the first round.

And after I get finished with that, I’ve got to learn everything there is to learn about self-publishing. To make sure I do it right and make the best choices.

I assumed writing a book was the hardest part about writing a book. And I assumed someone else would be taking care of all this other stuff. I just want it out, and in people’s hands, so I can be moving on. Progressing to the next step in this journey, in my ministry.

But it’s not. And I’m not. I’m stuck.

I used to hear and see God leading me and moving other people and things into place. But now I feel like He’s being silent, and I don’t know why.

Recently, I heard about the “500 years of silence” the Israelites experienced between the time the Messiah was prophesied to them and the birth of Jesus. 500 years. He didn’t speak another word to them directly, or through his prophets at all.

500…five-HUNDRED…Years.

Entire generations died, just waiting.

This is the stretch of time between where the Old Testament ends and the New Testament begins. (Random fun fact: Alexander the Great lived in that 500 year time span, which is why, he is a real person but not recorded in the Bible.)

Were these years of silence their own fault? Disobedience?

Or, was there a greater purpose to it?

Did God just stop caring about them?

Did God stop caring about me? Did I do something wrong?

I wrote this in December 2015, but hadn’t published it yet because I didn’t have answers to these questions – I didn’t even know what all questions to ask – and it was scary and confusing. I have answers now. Lots of them. Not all of them, but lots of them.

And I’ll be sharing them with you soon.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, have you ever felt like you were in a dry season? Are you in one now? How long did it last?

The List

When I was 16, some well-meaning mentors of mine recommended I make a list of the things I absolutely wanted in my husband, from physical attributes to character traits. Four typed pages and 160 bullet points later, I had what a “perfect spouse” looked like to me down on paper. Things like: 2-5 years older than me, 5’8” to 6’2” tall, dark and moderately-short styled hair, nice abs, no visible tattoos or piercings, strong Christian example & leader (or striving to become), passionate with a clear, concise dream/goal/calling, makes me laugh, takes me on picnics, notices & remembers “the little things”…. you get the point. Some valid, some negligible, some ridiculously adolescent.

The good that came from this exercise is it made it very easy for me to date, as soon as I would see something in someone that was a non-negotiable on my list, I would walk away from them before I got emotionally attached or invested.
They didn’t make it through the filter, I told myself.

The negative part of this exercise was that I trained myself to see the imperfections in every potential suitor I met, without considering my own short-comings. And to keep seeking a fallacy who didn’t exist.

“In the history of the universe, there has been only one perfect person. He remained single all his life and died young. The rest of us are imperfect creatures, deeply flawed, struggling to find our way through the complex maze of relationships and choices we encounter. We make mistakes, we learn and grow, we adapt and move on.” Dave & Lisa Frisbie begin their book, “Happily Remarried” with this poignant thought.

My husband and I chose to open our wedding ceremony with the same quote because it is such a paradigm shift on how to look for a marriage partner. When you begin with this foundational building block in mind – that we are all flawed – then you seek a spouse and maintain your relationship with an unprecedented level of grace. Knowing that no one is going to be perfect, when your partner misses the mark, it’s ok. It does not mean they are defect and you must now walk away, or if already married, live with the miserable knowledge that you chose the “wrong one”.

Author Stormie Omartian offers some additional advice on this, “I think if I could help a new wife in any area, it would be to discourage her from coming into her marriage with a big list of expectations and then being upset when her husband doesn’t live up to them. Of course there are some basics that should be agreed upon before the wedding date such as fidelity, financial support, honesty, kindness, basic decency, high moral standards, physical and emotional love and protection. When you don’t get those things, you can ask for them. When you still don’t get them, you can pray for them. But when it comes to specifics, you can’t require one person to meet all of your needs. The pressure to do that and fulfill your dreams at the same time can be overwhelming to a man.

If we try to control our husbands by having a big list for them to live up to and then are angry and disappointed when they can’t, we are the ones in error.”

In “Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts”, Les & Leslie Parrott quote a divorce attorney who once told them, the number-one reason two people split up is because they “refuse to admit they are married to a human being.”

“In every marriage, mutual hope gives way to mutual disillusionment the moment you realize your partner is not the perfect person you thought you married. But then again, he can’t be. No human being can fill our idealized dreams. A let down is inevitable,” the couple says.

The remedy for all of this is keeping the right expectations going in to marriage. But don’t take my word for it, I’m not the expert. I recommend delving further into the methods and advice these authors recommend in their books. You can never be too prepared for marriage.

To put the gravity of this in perspective, here’s the Introduction to “Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts”:

“In the 1930s, one out of seven marriages ended in divorce. In the 1960s, it was one out of four. Of the 2.4 million couples who will get married this year in the United States, it is predicted that at least 43 percent will not survive. For too many couples, marriage has become ‘till divorce do us part’.

Every couple marrying today is at risk. More than two-hundred thousand new marriages each year end prior to the couple’s second anniversary. After they toss the bouquet and return the tuxedos, couples often assume they’re headed for marital bliss. But a study of those who recently tied the knot revealed that 49 percent reported having serious marital problems. Half were already having doubts about whether their marriage would last.

The truth is, most engaged couples prepare more for their wedding than they do for their marriage. The $50-billion-a-year wedding industry can testify to that fact. ….More than one million copies of bridal magazines are sold each month, focusing mainly on wedding ceremonies, honeymoons, and home furnishings – but not on marriage itself.”

Here’s a more beneficial list for preparing yourself for marriage. The most helpful books I’ve read on the topic so far:

“Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts” by Les & Leslie Parrott (there is also a 2nd marriage version)
“Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married” by Gary Chapman
“Love & Respect” by Dr. Emmerson Eggrichs
“Personality Plus” by Florence Littauer
“The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman
“His Needs Her Needs” by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
“Captivating” by Stasi Eldridge (the men’s counterpart to this is “Wild at Heart”)
“Happily Remarried” by David & Lisa Frisbie
“Marriage, Divorce & Remarriage” by Kenneth Hagin
“Second Marriage” by Richard B, Stuart
“The Power of a Praying Wife” by Stormie Omartian
“Men Are Like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti” by Bill and Pam Farrell
“The Invisible Bond” by Barbara Wilson
“1001 Questions to Ask Before You Get Married” by Monica Leahy (this is fun to use on date nights and talk through together)