You and I hope for good things such as paying our bills, fitting into our pants, raising somewhat normal kids, and seeing our wildest dreams come true. You know, the usual. We have high hopes, hustle hard, and then, to our dismay, things get much worse before they get better.
Have you ever found that to be true? I certainly have. When I was sure things would bend my way, to my dismay I found that before my big dreams would ever become my current reality, certain aspects of my life would get worse before they got better.
No one knows this better than those who have experienced the sting of oppression. They are the ones beating the drum in the name of truth, hope, and a better way of life. They dream of equality for the marginalized. Throughout history, it’s more often than not the underdogs, the oppressed who rise up to demand fairness and justice where there has been oppression and bondage in the past. They are the ones pushing and sacrificing for peace and freedom. That’s a big dream.
Look at any major movement in ancient or modern history and you’ll find that things usually grew worse, so much so that good people marched, stood, sat in, and raised their voices because they wouldn’t take injustice any longer. They dreamed of a greater, sweeter, better way of life. They knew better was possible and they wouldn’t stop until the dream was a reality.
When our dreams seem unattainable, never to be made plain in our reality, we’ll fare far better if we expect things to get worse before they get better. Our gut says if things get worse, we should quit, it’s a waste of time, but what if things are getting worse only to make way for a breakthrough? It’s always darkest just before the dawn.
Moses, the reluctant dreamer, serves a perfect example of this. After demanding that the Israelites be set free from their yoke of undue bondage in Egypt, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, made the Israelites, his free labor, work doubly as hard and produce just as much as they had before without the necessary resources to do so. The very people Moses felt compelled to stand up for blamed him for their anguish, and he questioned if pressing Pharaoh was ever going to work.
After great encouragement from the God of the Israelites, Moses forged ahead and continued to demand freedom for the oppressed. Justice didn’t come swiftly, it didn’t come after one hard day or one single act. Things only turned when he bravely, consistently demanded freedom for the oppressed. It came after utter chaos, after tall tale-ish plagues hit Egypt wiping out livestock, water supplies, and worse. Moses discovered that when you chase the dream, it may just get worse before it gets better, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the fight, worth the climb, worth the stand, or worth the sacrifice. It is.
Our dreams will always demand the best of us: the grit we didn’t know we had and the sacrifice we never knew we might have to make. As we rise to be the dreamer we were always intended to be, we’ll stand with dreamers past and present who, too, knew to never assume the dream was dead in the middle of the story, or when the hero takes a hit. When things are at their worst, hold strong, because a sweeter, brighter, better day is coming.
This post was inspired by my latest book and study, She Dreams: Live the Life You Were Created For