Fiction Friday: Your Dream Is Not Dead, It's Nesting (A Guest Post)

Today's post is a guest post by my friend Mary DeMuth, who has shared her wisdom with us here before. She has lots of writerly resources over at her site www.marydemuth.com. This article was in her newsletter and I loved it so much, I asked her to share it here. I think many writers can empathize with that feeling of having a dream that has died. But Mary shares here that your dream might not be dead-- it might just be nesting. How could seeing your dream that way change your outlook? Read on...

The other day my husband came into the house and said, "I don't know what to do about the dead bird in the gutter."

"There's a dead bird in our gutter?"

"Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure if I need to go up there with a ladder, or call someone in case it died of a disease."

An hour or so later, Aidan saw the bird's wing jutting at a strange angle from the gutter. "Dad," he said. "It's not dead. It's moving."

After some investigation, we realized that the bird wasn't dead or dying. It was nesting. And its husband often kept vigil nearby. (The birds are doves; I like to think of them as husband and wife.)

I thought about our misconception, and then the Lord zinged me. "Your dream isn't dead. It may look dead. But it's nesting."

His words to me are His words to you.

Do you have a dream?

Do you think it's dead?

Have you thought of the possibility that your dream isn't dead after all, but in a period of waiting and watching before it hatches?

So many of us give up too quickly on the dreams God plants inside us. Consider Oswald Chambers' important words:

"God gives us the vision {dream}, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we have patience."

So you may feel battered and frustrated and bewildered. But there is life yet in that dream, a twitch of a wing, the waiting of a patient mama bird. You need to sit and rest and wait and trust. Everything will be made clear in God's perfect time. The hatching will come. Rest in Philippians 1:6: "And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."