Broken Sails: Repairing Dreams
Broken sails: Repairing dreams
This is a followup post to the "Wind in Sails" where I give four ways to push passion into the sails of the people you lead. If you haven't yet read that post please take the time to read it, you'll be glad you did!
Kids always have sails up
Kids have passion and believe that everything is possible. It's ingrained in them to dream big dreams and hope for bright futures. I have yet to ask a child what they hope to be when they grow up and not be impressed with their response. This optimistic, hopeful perspective on life is so part of childhood that when people retire from the jobs and begin doing what they are really passionate about we call it, "living their second childhood." It's curious that somewhere along the way their sails get broken and they start to merely exist rather than truly live.
Life Beats the Dreams Out of People
Ask an adult what they dream about when they dream about the future and you will find a verity of responses, most of which reflect that at some point the rocky cliffs of life have left them just trying to stay afloat, let alone dream. They have settled for far less then they were designed for. The reasons for this settling are as diverse as each individual, but in all stories of lost hope lies that fact that life has beat it out of them.
Each person, born with great potential, started to believe the lies spoken about them. They started to believe that they were not smart enough, not gifted enough, that they were average at best. They believed that they were defined by their sin or the sins that had been done to them. They had forgotten that they have a destiny that is different from every other individual ever to live.
Sails Can Be Restored
“At the root, broken sails stem from broken beliefs...”
At the root, broken sails stem from broken beliefs that have been forged over a lifetime and so these grooves of belief are not quickly filled in. The secret for someone who is striving to restore a broken soul is that deep inside of every person is still a seed of hope. It's what keeps them going. Without that seed of hope they would choose to simple end everything.
They job of the restorer then is to draw out of they broken the seed of hope in them and help them to remember what if feels like to dream again. The restorer asks questions to pull vision out of the person and then speaks life into them until they start to believe the truth. This will take varied amounts of time depending on the depth of corrosion that has taken place, but the reward of an awakened soul will leave the restorer changed forever as well.
Good questions to ask...
What do you dream about happening when you dream?
What is the last thing you remember hoping for in your life? What killed that hope inside of you?
What are some ways you are uniquely gifted to bring hope to lives around you?