The Missing Half of the Dream

Well, Ryan and I have finally begun to attack the room of horror.

Its name is fitting.

The room will be our guest room, but for now, it's the space where all the boxes of stuff, namely stacks of paperwork, boxes of trinkets, and stacks of other things that we just haven't had the mental stamina to deal with have all been tossed.

Truth? If we've lived here for two months and haven't needed any of it, we probably don't actually need any of it. And much of it has gone right out the door in trash bags. Some of it has found a home. But none of it is allowed back over the threshold and into that room.

I pulled a pile of burlap from the top of a stack and underneath it, I found our bucket list. A literal blue wire bucket, from the dollar store, half-full of wooden clothespins and another dozen clothespins clipped to the edge.

Each clothespin bears a dream of ours. It's a project we did one evening back when we still were just dating, but dating enough to know we were headed for forever. We sat on the living room floor, the pile of empty clothespins between us, each of us clutching Sharpies and scribbling dreams. Big dreams, little dreams, silly dreams, serious dreams.

As time went by, the dreams started coming true, and we'd pluck the clothespin from the bucket, write the date on the opposite side, and clip it to the edge of the bucket.

Eat at Five Guys - 09.06.13
Horseback Riding -  06.15.13
Ride a Tandem Bike - 12.06.12
Drive-In Movie - 07.06.13
Build a Snowman - 01.05.14
 
Quickly, the edge filled, and we swapped. Completed dreams went inside and waiting dreams went on the edge.

Go Ice Skating
Stand in the Pacific Ocean
Visit New York City
Skip Rocks

I found the bucket in the room of horror, and to my horror, one clothespin lay in half on the floor, spring missing and matching side nowhere to be found.

I grabbed it and it was empty. Plain wood staring up at me.

It had been on the edge, which meant it was a dream yet to fulfill, and yet the side with the dream written on it was gone. All I held was the missing half of the dream.

Ryan found me, kneeling on the floor, holding the broken clothespin in one hand and our bucket in the other. I am sure my look was much more forlorn than it needed to be as I held up the half of the pin.

"It's gone. This dream is missing," I told him flatly. "And when did we last dream up new adventures? It's been too long."

He shook his head. "This HOUSE is a huge dream come true. We're living in one of the biggest dreams we've had."

I knew he was right. I also knew that when you move as much stuff as we moved and the worst that has happened has been the loss of half a clothespin, you really do not have room to complain. But it wasn't the missing piece of wood that got me in the gut. It was the missing dream.

We've had other dreams go missing. Not tangibly like this, but in a literal kind of way. Dreams we've had for our lives that God has not chosen to fulfill at this time. Some have been a no, and some have been a wait. But the loss of them, whether temporarily or permanently still hurts.

As we cleaned the room of horror, I also found the pack of blank clothespins. The space for us to sit down, dream fresh dreams, and clip them to our bucket. The chance to dream has not left us just because one dream went missing.

So we will dream. And we will mark more of them off the list. We'll have our adventures and think of new ones.

And who knows? Maybe somewhere along the way, we'll re-dream the one we lost and get to see it come to pass!