Dear friend: listening to a dream & some precious news.

I'm so grateful to get to share something so dear to my heart today.

If your story holds tender places from infertility, miscarriage or longing for family, I encourage you to come gently into this letter.

Dear friend,

I’ve been spending more time in my yard now that the weather is warmer. I love picturing us sitting together, with glasses of iced pineapple tea mixed with lemonade, enjoying the very start of my roses and my peonies beginning to bloom as we share our hearts. This tender story has been on my heart to share for a while now, and I’m grateful to be here with you.

Photo by Debbie Konrad on Unsplash

Back in the fall, I was feeling a bit lost, trying to find a rhythm in the midst of kindergarten pickups and a new season. I wouldn’t say I ever fully found it, even though there were definitely things that helped ground my days in the midst of lots of sick days for my family. One of the questions that kept showing up for me this year was if there was a dream or longing that was asking to be listened to.

In November, I listened to a conversation between Beth Booram and Summer Gross about Beth’s book, Starting Something New and the idea of listening to a God-given dream. It felt like the nudge to pull the book off my unread shelf and make space to listen for my own dream. As we headed into the holiday season, I knew there wouldn’t be much space for this kind of intentional listening. I was more right than I knew at the time, as sickness visited our family again, and I was grateful I’d already committed to revisiting it in January.

As a new year began, I began to read Beth’s book and felt her gentle words offer encouragement and shepherding for listening to my life. I revisited my journals to listen for clues and help discerning what might be true in my heart.

“If you are trying to discern whether you have a dream from God that needs tending, pay attention to what you are praying. Not the rote or dispassionate prayers, but the ones that have a quality of unbiddenness. Prayers that over take you. Prayers that you can’t “not” pray. They form in you, not so much from your choosing to think about them but from the swirl of desire and desperation merging together, giving voice to your deep yearning. Those prayers can indicate where God is preparing to or has implanted the seed of a dream.”

I’ll be honest that I didn’t make it very far into Beth’s book, only covering a few chapters in those winter months, but I was paying attention. I was paying attention to my prayers, listening to desire and desperation in the midst of prayers and journal entries over the last few years.

Photo by Hallie Ferrell on Unsplash

There was one dream in particular that I saw over and over again in my handwritten pages: the dream of another baby. I wasn’t surprised by it; in fact, I’d been hoping to discern whether this dream was truly one to act on or simply residual from another season. Was this leftover from how my younger self imagined life would go, a way the grief of mothering bigger kids & leaving babyhood behind was presenting itself, or truly a God-given dream?

[I feel sensitive sharing this dream, because I have so many people in my life for who this touches a tender place. I’ve cried with and for friends who ache to have a family of their own, who have lost babies, have experienced infertility or experienced heartache in some way here. It feels like a privilege to have the space and ability to explore this dream, knowing that others are not offered this.]

I didn’t land anywhere definitive, but simply asked the Lord for help to discern whether this dream was from him. While my first two pregnancies may have looked like “all was well” on the surface, they both were marked by pain and heartache. I’m so grateful for the gift of my daughter out of a season marked by survival and quiet suffering and the gift of my son out of a season marked by desperation and unsafety, even as I grieve what those days cost me and my husband. My body remembers what pregnancy had cost me, even if others might not be able to see the emotional toll it had taken on me.

The weight of what those other seasons had held was only one of the many ways I was struggling to see through the fog. I was wrestling with the idea of vocation for this next season, with both my kids in elementary school, listening for how best to spend that time. I told the Lord how I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to tell if there was a true longing here. I felt so stuck and couldn’t make sense of all that was coming up in my heart.

In the midst of this wrestling and listening, I received the gift of these words from Jeremiah 6:16:

This is what the Lord says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
    ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
    and you will find rest for your souls.”

I was so grateful for this image of standing at the crossroads, that felt representative of the inner work I was doing. It felt like this was a promise that there was a good way forward, and it was possible to find it. It also revealed a fear of my heart for how much “the good way” might cost me. To hear that there would be rest for me in the days ahead, regardless of what might be before me, felt like a mantle of peace for this next season. I still didn’t have an answer yet I was grateful to have the way the Lord offered me his presence, and how held I felt through this verse.

The next few weeks of winter held more sickness for our family. I had little space for anything other than the vigilance of taking temperatures, administering Vicks rub to chests, scheduling doctor’s visits and praying for healing. All my prayers and listening for a dream were put on hold while I attended to the needs before me. And then, I found out I was pregnant.

I feel so tender sharing this news. I’m pregnant. There were certainly tears of surprise and overwhelm, but also joy. What a gift to realize that the Lord had revealed what I could not discern on my own. This baby was a dream from him, and he was giving it to me, to our family. There is so much grace in the timing, in this being a surprise and not having to see through the fog on my own. I feel so grateful for the way the Lord prepared my heart, even if I didn’t know that’s what was happening at the time.

April 2023

I’m holding in tension the weight of this change for our family, even as I’m holding the joy of this dream that is unfolding before me. I love these words from Beth Booram that express both the cost of a dream, and the gift of it:

When you embrace this kind of dream it will substantially shape the way you live your life. It will cause you to reorder your priorities. It will more than likely require change—maybe a change of vocation, geography or lifestyle. It will necessitate risk and sacrifice. And it will take courage and belief in God and in you to see it through.

God who knows you intimately through and through, who has fashioned you inside and out and has been with you through thick and thin, has deposited this seed of a dream in you for you to harvest. Whether you see it or not, you have the unique capacities and life experiences that realizing this dream requires. You have the passion and perspective necessary to launch this dream. That doesn’t mean others haven’t been or won’t be involved in the shaping and accomplishing of this endeavor, but it is yours to steward.

What a gift to be entrusted to steward something so precious.

Dear friend, thank you for being here with me. It means so much that you want to read this letter. Thank you for listening to this story of my dream, several years in the making. It is a gift to share the news of our fall baby with you.

I’m praying for your own heart, that if there is a dream that the Lord has entrusted to you, that you would have the courage and patience to tend to it with him too.

As always, I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to just hit "reply" to this email. I read and savor every email that comes my way, even if I don’t always have the space to respond. Whether you want to share a bit of a dream you’re tending to in this season, or if my words brought up anything for you, I’d be so glad to know.

Warmly,

Alison