Equipping Series: Overcoming the Obstacles of Lost Dreams

As a continuation of our Equipping Series: Overcoming Obstacles, we want to take this month to share about the reality of The Loss of Dreams or Goals.  We have all had our dreams crushed or as time passes we never see them come to fruition.   Thankfully, as we grow older and experience life we realize that our dreams will not all come true as we originally dreamt them!

Often the most difficult obstacle in the Cause for LIFE is when men and women are under 25 years old and they often don’t have the wisdom to know that dreams morph over time as life transitions. 

When an unplanned pregnancy happens everyone involved in the situation simply sees their dreams as derailed and dead unless they abort.  Our job, as Christ followers, is to come alongside young and hopeful men and women and help them re-engineer their dreams and lives, which includes carrying their child to term.  As you can imagine, this isn’t easy!

I don’t think anyone let’s go of their dreams easily and so understanding what their dream is and finding out why that dream is their dream is important.  So your primary goal is to ask good questions and LISTEN!  

We will reference the ladies in this article but please be mindful that this applies to the men involved too.

1)      As always, begin with asking her about her feelings, emotions, and fears and then affirm that those are natural in the circumstances she is facing.

2)      Ask her: “If your circumstances were different what is your heart’s desire for the pregnancy/baby?” Most, if not all, will say they would rather have the baby IF her circumstances were different.  If she answers in that way then you have the open door to tell her that you want to help her get her heart’s desire. Remind her that circumstances change day-by-day and week-by-week and that you will help her address her rapidly changing circumstances.

3)      She probably won’t identify her obstacle in the term of a lost dream so you will be looking for statements that say: “If I have the baby I won’t be able to_________________” (finish school, get my promotion, have a normal family one day, etc)

4)      As she shares about her future plans or how she expects her future to look listen carefully to what she is saying while looking for common threads in how she describes her dreams—professional and personal.

• Do you hear her saying it is her dream or their parents’ dream?
• Do you hear that she is motivated by influence, money, power, or identity in success? 
• Do you hear her sharing how she does want a family someday but not like this, not now?  

All of what you hear in her description will serve as the foundation to the re-engineered version of her dreams. 

5)      Now, think back on some professional and personal dreams that you had that were realized differently than you ever expected.  We can almost get a chuckle from this, can’t we?   Most of us have had a lost love, a lost job, or an overall tumultuous path to the success we have in our careers and in our families.  We never knew marriage would be so hard or that children were that much work!  We didn’t understand how many sacrifices and hard decisions we would have before we got the job we really wanted!  Many of us never knew we wanted the job we finally got! 

Share your story and wisdom: 

Share your biggest disappointment or the hardest decision you had to make to get to your place in life.  Share with her or him how your disappointment turned out to be better than if you had it all go your way.  Share how you thought your career path would go and how it turned out to be very different than how you originally dreamed…and how you are better today for the path you had to take. 

We have to be careful when we share our life stories and what we learned and do it in a way that our experiences are relatable and helpful but NOT the identical to what they are experiencing.  We have all heard someone say, “I know how you feel” and we have all thought “NO YOU DON’T” so be careful in how you share it but do share it. 

Don’t over sell your story but do share it in a way that can bring hope to her as a reality of wisdom that she simply may not realize…until today. 

Share a friend’s story:

Even though a friend’s story is farther removed from her situation it can be helpful to share about people you know who have overcome obstacles to build a great life.   Share about a mother who chose life and went on through school to become a nurse or some other professional.  Or share about a Father who stepped up to parent and even though he didn’t want to do it at first he could never imagine life without his children and wife.  We all know people like this so be prepared to share the hope of others who have overcome!

6)      Does re-engineering the dream create obstacles to overcome?  Will she need to move homes or change schools? Will she need help with tuition? Will she need to delay a promotion?  Does adoption seem like an option for her and if so how can she pursue that option?  These will need to be talked about, and some of them totally addressed, before she can choose LIFE. 

At this point, you can start asking her to imagine other ways life may look that would still be good. You can begin thinking about creative ways to help her overcome her obstacles—helping her find scholarship money, inviting her to live with you, helping her find her own apartment, etc.  

DON’T FORGET:  She will likely need our services somewhere in her process of decision making and we are happy to serve her with pregnancy testing, an ultrasound, and a private nurse consultation.  We too will help her find available resources for her to pursue her dreams AND have her baby.