Detours to Dreams

4 days after my “Martin Luther King” moment, a detour happens.

My doctor gently confronts me with the fact that my tiredness – ongoing and insatiable, insomnia driven, driven regardless of the amount of hours I do and don’t sleep isn’t something that I have imagined. My adrenal glands have no more give. This has led to other complications but effectively they are a little tired. Oh. I didn’t expect that and yet I knew.

It explains why despite the harder I try, the more I feel like I am not getting anywhere, why my tendency to cry easily has turned into something I am struggling to control and manage. It explains why my body is struggling more and more to get joy out of the physical – where I love being up the mountain and yet the very idea of pushing hard to get there fills me with anxiety and concern that energy wise I am not sure I can get there.

Part of me is very angry that this happens now – just when discussions and dreams are getting real.
Part of me is very relieved that I finally know why I feel like this way and that it isn’t my imagination.
Part of me also is learning that actually, maybe this is a good time to stop and reflect on what is needed for the next season.

See the dream I have is a pretty consuming dream that can’t happen while my life is full of everything else that it is full of at the moment.

I am not always very good at releasing things that I enjoy doing when they seem consistent.
I know that I have made choices and lived a full life in the last 10 years – with gratitude for much that has been achieved, and often silent acknowledgment of the background stress in the process of getting to the grateful.

I don’t think that God caused my tiredness and this detour. I do think that this detour may be a grace season from God though.

This detour is a gift. It’s forcing the slowdown, settle down and check in about what does the day need to look like. I wish that I could say this happened more naturally for me than what it does.

It’s encouraging rather than forcing me to reflect on what does the next decade need to hold.

I have never had to reflect on personally and professionally in the same way that I do now entering my 40’s. There is permission to say I choose not to do things the way I did in my 30’s. There is permission granted to live and love just as intentionally but with a different focus.

I am still struggling to envision what this could look like.
I am still thinking that the dream is going to be an add-on to what is.
If I am very honest, it can’t be.

It means a new season and I don’t know what that looks like yet.