Are Opportunities Really Missed, or Just Delayed? What If We Run Out of Time?

What do you do when you feel you are running out of time, and yet there are still things on your bucket list. There are still dreams waiting to be fulfilled. It is not through procrastination and laziness that you haven't done those things. It may not be that your goals were possibly even unrealistic. Perhaps pursuit of your dreams have been put on hold because of reasons out of your control. 

There are lots of reasons a dream floats out of reach:  death of someone who may have been involved in helping reach a goal, an injury, lack of physiological function, or illness that has sidelined physical ability, loss of income, or even "aging out" of a particular goal. 

I have begun to make Plans A, B, and C for my dreams in case my original plans for achieving them doesn't work out. Plan A didn't work out for my dream of building my new home two years ago. The price of lumber went out of my desired range. It could not be avoided nor controlled on my end. My Plan B didn't work either. It was to build a metal building and go from there. A more-than skirmish over in Europe moved metal prices up the ladder and away from 100% affordability the way I envisioned it. So Plan C was to wait. It had to be the default setting for my dream, and I didn't like it one bit. Did I know that it would happen? I looked over my house plan design a million times (I didn't count, but I bet it's a good guesstimate). I tried to redraw it smaller than what I wanted, but then I wouldn't have everything in it the way I wanted. I was honestly beginning to think I would have no choice but to finance the construction of the house of my dreams. But in the end, waiting was my option.

But what if it wouldn't have happened? Would I really have financed even though I was dead set against it? Nothing wrong with financing if that's your thing, but it wasn't mine. At all. 

There is another dream I have, and have had for a long time. Some of my Youtube viewers know that I have a charity with many functions, and my husband and I work with other charities and charitable foundations regularly.  I mention it in passing every now and again when people are interviewing me or in livestream chats if it happens to come up in conversation. But this dream is called "Hope Pregnancy Center". It is to be a peer counseling, medical pregnancy center offering quality, confidential, and free services to couples, men (they are a 50% part of a pregnancy happening), and women facing unexpected news of a pregnancy. I won't go into greater detail, because unless you plan to help me fund it, my business plan is inconsequential to you at this time. The point is, there is a lot that has to go into a dream like Hope Pregnancy Center.  And the longer this dream simmers, the less likely I see it happening the way I originally intended. 

I mentioned in my last post about grieving the loss of a delayed dream, but a part of me is beginning to grieve the loss of a dream I've lived with for a longer time, and may I have to live without ever fulfilling it. I grieve for the people I may not get to help. I grieve for the people I may not get to meet. I feel a lot of sorrow watching the calendar pages flip, because with every passing week, the limitations to achievement begin to build.

While some of my dreams do have expiration dates, perhaps if I am willing to pass them on to someone else, the joy in seeing them live will overshadow the sorrow of me not being able to do it myself. Every day, I am building components of this dream, and the preparation stage may outlive my ability to do more. 

This is where I find myself with this particular dream, and maybe you are also in a similar place with a few of your own. Instead of starting it up all at once, perhaps the dream has to come in phases.  For me, it may be peer counseling and training first while I work on finding medical equipment and already exhausted medical professionals willing to donate their time. 

Did I mention that I had a Plan D for my home design? It was to build it one phase at a time. I already had phases for my homestead planned out. Phase 1 was the building of the house. Phase 2, the basement and screened porch atop the basement. Phase 3, the three car garage and a new building for the horses. And so forth and so on. Plan D would've seen us building just a third of the house at a time. The plumbing would have been a nightmare the way we already had it set up underneath the concrete slab, but we'd have made it work. 

And that's really all we could do, right? Make it work or pass as much of it along as we can to the next person to finish? 

Time is the greatest ally, not enemy, of a dream.