I stumbled onto this tonight, 24 November, 2017, while looking for something else, and read it for the first time in almost five years. We were divorced in November of 2011, so this would have been written in January of 2012. It is amazing that I could have been so spot on that day, but have drifted so far from these plain and precious truths in so short a time. Suddenly, I am anxious to dig those old ornaments out and talk about old times with them. They haven’t heard that Sara has two little girls, and Leah’s first is just two weeks old. Yup. We have some catching up to do.
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Tonight, I took down the Christmas tree. This was the first Christmas since the divorce in late November. For a while, I had thought I wouldn’t put the tree up, at all. It is one thing to be the only one home, but it is quite another to be the only one that will be home.
The exact train of thought that led me to putting the tree up is not clear. It had something to do with the children who might come by, and with saying goodbye to a dream. But I made up my mind to do it.
I fully expected the chore to be melancholy – perhaps heartbreaking – but it was not. Handling the old ornaments did not evoke thoughts of loss and loneliness. They were not enemies; they were friends – old, quiet, familiar friends – the best sort. They did not mock me; they uplifted me, and made me think, not of the loss of what we’d hoped to build, but of what we actually did build. Decorating the tree was a wonderful, pleasant, happy task, and having it up for three weeks has been a delight.
When it was time to take it down, I had the same fear: that it would be a sad time, and I’d get my nose rubbed in my failure – my inability to keep a marriage and a family together. And, just like before, I was wrong. I shook hands with each of those old friends as they came down from their posts on the tree. They reminded me that they’d be back around in a year, and that things like love and family seldom die; they just change into a different form. Somehow, in the process of taking the ornaments and lights off the tree, a very powerful message came to me.
No dream is ever achieved in 100% perfection. In order for that to happen, we’d have to have perfect knowledge of every element in the dream; we’d have to be omniscient. Further, every person involved in the dream would have to do exactly what have envisioned for them, and the only way that could happen is if we controlled them – violated their sacred agency; we’d have to be omnipotent.
We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but we are human – created in the image of Our Father – which is a very great thing to be, indeed! We dream our dreams and we do our best on them. Some dreams, and parts of dreams, come true, but not all dreams. That does not make dreaming a waste of time! Oh, my goodness, no! In my case, while the marriage didn’t last, if I hadn’t dreamed that dream, I wouldn’t have my daughters. I wouldn’t have the huge number of powerful and spiritual lessons that being a father and a husband have brought me. I suppose we could say that we walk into the dream store – surely a wing off the Great House of Heaven! – we tell the Shopkeeper of our dream, and we lay down everything we have in our hearts. In exchange for our all, the Shopkeeper gives us what He deems best for us, and He is Omnipotent and Omniscient! But we are not shortchanged in the transaction. We get our change in the form of lessons, friendships, testimonies, and witness of the Greatness of that Shopkeeper of our dreams – in short, all those pearls of great price we could never have foreseen.
I have packed away the ornaments as carefully as ever, and will store them against the next Christmas, when, once again, I will shake hands with those old friends, and inhale the memories of love they wear about them, and it will be sweet.
rebsarge 