Tag Archives: Romans 8:38

The Dream is Collapsing

A dream within a dream within a dream.

Have you ever dreamed that you were dreaming while having a dream? Now, how about dreaming about the dream where you were dreaming within a dream? That is a whole lot to wrap your mind around. Are you living within a dream right now? Do your dreams seem real to you? Does your life seem real to you? Science has proven that our minds do not know the difference between “reality” and simply imagining something. This blurs the edge between reality and your imagination.

inception the movie
Inception

It feels more like an implosion

This is going to be one of those transparent posts, not the encouraging post that I typically write. If you want to stay encouraged this Christmas season, then please skip this post and go find a funny meme that someone else has posted.

If you have watched the movie Inception and watched a building imploded, you will understand my analogies below.
Currently, my life feels as though it is imploding. I have personally witnessed a tall skyscraper being imploded. It was a strange sight. One moment it was there, and the next, it was a pile of rubble. Many of us who were alive remember seeing the twin towers imploding after the 911 attack.

In my life as in a tall building, the foundation was solid, no reason to believe that anything would change, but slowly, the weight of the top stories of my life began to grow heavier and heavier to where the walls of my life could not stand the pressure of all of that weight. The foundation, which for me is my faith in Christ was still solid, but the weight that was being added to the top stories of my life was growing. First, it was realizing that not living the purpose for which I was born, added an emotional weight to daily living. Next, it was our family business.  We had moved to Colorado to open a new branch, but within a year, employee issues back in VA started to draw us back to VA. We were spending more and more time flying back and forth to VA than building our business in CO.  The dream to open a new branch in CO was starting to fade.  After four years, we sold our mountain home in CO and moved back to VA with our proverbial tail between our legs. We were having multiple employee issues; people leaving with no notice, unable to rehire people to replace them. We were operating on a skeleton crew. The market started to change and our sales started to drop. The walls were now starting to bulge in our “building”. I experienced my first anxiety attack after back to back losses in sales. This anxiety manifested itself as muscle twitches. For 2 months, due to my PCP mentioning the letters, ALS, I was put on anxiety and anti-depressants. The “building” took a direct hit, exploding with the force that shook my entire soul.
My entire shipping department less one person slowly quit and we couldn’t find anyone to ship our products except our shipping supervisor. The glass windows in this “building” were now starting to break.  We decided to begin letting our staff, other than the warehouse work remotely from home. Maybe this would help us retain employees if they were able to work from home. The offices were now empty and quiet. I would go to work, only to find an empty building except a few people on the first floor. Due to not having warehouse staff, we decided to close our offices and warehouse and move the shipping operation to a fulfillment center in Denver. That move cost us a month of sales which affected cash flow. In the midst of all of this, we found a vendor in Taiwan that would manufacture a few of our products, thus reducing our cost of goods. We were now starting to make money again after 3 months of losing money due to the move to a fulfillment center. The dream was becoming clearer, the dust was starting to settle, but in November, this vendor’s email account was hacked. We thought we were wiring funds to them, but in fact, we were wiring funds to an unknown account in the UK, a fraudulent account. We lost the entire amount of the purchase order, for us a large dollar amount.
buildings being implodedRealizing that our sales were dwindling and that fulfillment centers were not cheap, we decided to put our house on the market to reduce expenses.  We were shoring up the collapsing “building”. We had a contract on our home in 22 days. The dream was becoming clearer and we thought that it was not collapsing. We felt as though we knew what we were supposed to do.  Maybe we can save this “building”. A few days before Christmas, our agent called to tell us, while we were at a Christmas party that the buyers were canceling the sales contract due to a small issue that was really of no consequence, but in this day and age of residential real estate, buyers can walk away from a contract for almost any reason. The dream was starting to get fuzzy, was it collapsing once again?

The dream is imploding

As of today, our sales are down 20% compared to last year. This, combined with losing a boatload of money in wire fraud is causing the dream to implode. The potential buyers renigging on the contract, (the 2nd house which they have done the same thing on) plus the money issues at work are causing this dream to collapse.

My lovely wife had her knee replaced at the end of August. The surgery went well, but the surgeon failed to tell us or schedule physical therapy for two weeks after the surgery. This has caused scar tissue to build up on her knee and she does not have the range of motion that she should. This is also causing her pain. She is currently walking with a cane. Her dream is collapsing, the dream of walking without pain, being able to start doing some of the things that her bad knee would not let her do seems like a dream unfulfilled.

Can you stop a dream from collapsing?

Now the question is, how does one keep a dream or “building” from collapsing or can you? During the beginning of a collapsing dream, everything seems to go in slow motion, but once it gains momentum, all one can do is to hold on to something and ride it down. For me, it’s my faith. I have to know that neither death nor life, nor powers or principalities can separate me from my foundation. I may end up in a rubble or awake from this dream. The inception of every dream has to have an end, and it appears that the time is now. The top has stopped spinning, but one day……..it will start to spin, yet again.

bronze spinning top

This Dream is Collapsing