When a Good Dream Dies

What do you do when the dream you loved… ends?

In this episode, we sit in the sacred, painful moment when a good dream dies — not because you failed, not because you misheard God, but because its season ended. This is the funeral of Plan A. The moment you realize the life you thought you were building is not the life you will live.

We talk about:
• the grief of losing a dream that was beautiful and holy
• how to recognize when a dream has run its course
• why the death of a dream doesn’t mean the dream was wrong
• the difference between a dream dying and a dream being delayed
• how to honor what was without rushing into what’s next
• the quiet, hidden work God does in the aftermath

If you’re carrying the weight of a dream that fell apart — a calling, a relationship, a role, a version of your life you thought was certain — this episode will give you language, permission, and peace.

This is the moment of impact.
The end of Plan A.
The beginning of something you can’t see yet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, welcome to the Dream Blueprint, where we build your dream into something real. This episode was really hard for me to put together. And it's because this is a really hard topic. It's the topic is when a good dream dies. I knew this was gonna be boxes in my heart that I didn't want to open, trauma I didn't want to revisit. These are stories I only tell to my very closest friends in private and safe settings, but I'm gonna share them with you today so that you know that I understand what it's like to lose not just a flippant dream, but a real dream, a good dream when your entire world crashes, when your identity is destroyed. You know, I used to be terrified of grief. It was that tiger that jumps out of the closet at you, and you never know when it's gonna strike. But now I've come to see grief and sadness as my familiar friend. I've got my familiar black grief and mourning sweatshirt on that's seen me through a lot of dark times. And grief is no longer my enemy, it's my familiar friend. And today I'm inviting you to come into that space. It's a safe space, this little space of sadness. It's a quiet space, it's dark. For many of you, it probably feels familiar. And I just want you to sit with me for a moment in that black, blank warmth of sadness as I walk you through the death of a dream and the kinds of dreams, good dreams, that can die. Because there are different kinds of dream deaths. There are dreams that die suddenly, in a single sentence, in a single meeting, in a single moment that you can never unhear or never unlive. There are dreams that die slowly, unraveling thread by thread, until one day you realize that there's nothing left to hold. And there are dreams that die more than once. They resurrect and then they crash, and they resurrect again and then they crash, and each crash is more devastating than the last until you say, I can't pursue this dream anymore. It's too emotionally painful. I need to put it away in a box. I've lived all three of these kinds of dreams. And when I'm talking about when good dreams die, I'm not talking about the little things. I'm not talking about hobbies or whims or ideas or you know, things you pop on Pinterest. I'm talking about the collapse of an entire world, the life you thought you were building, the identity you lived inside, the future you were walking toward. When a good dream dies, it's not just the dream that ends, it's the whole world that held it. The first time a good dream died like that for me, I was about 19 years old. The other dreams came later. They were a series of dream obliterations clustered together in my late 30s and early 40s in a season that felt like an actual hurricane. So we're gonna start at the beginning. And when my first dream died, it was my soccer dream. And because it's soccer, I call this one sudden death. I, my whole life, had been training to be a soccer star. That was my identity. I skipped other opportunities. I sacrificed, I did double practices and triple practices and would run after school and weightlift twice a day, and went to every coaching and clinic, and and I was state team, and I got to try out at regionals, and I was captain of my district-winning soccer team, and and I, you know, I had tried out for things and not made the team, and then like Rudy, I would, I would, you know, go running in blizzards, and and then I'd show up stronger and I'd make the team, and then I'd get cut again and I'd make the team. But I was always progressing forward until I was finally a division one soccer player. And not only was I a division one soccer player, we went to the Suite 16. We were number 16 in the world at in the United States, which at the time was the world, meaning that we were some of the best female soccer players on the planet. And my dream ever since I had seen the women's world win the World Cup was to be a member of that World Cup team one day, to be an Olympian, to be a national team member, to be a captain of my D1 soccer team. I knew that wasn't gonna happen my freshman year, but I figured like if I just hustled, if I just tried hard enough, like I'd catch up eventually. I even dropped classes so I could go train extra time. And because I worked so hard, you know, my team, they call me Rudy. And that Christmas, my coaches called me in before winter break and they said, You are such a hard worker that you will never not have a place on this team. And I was so excited. And then I got injured, and I had was already in the bottom tier of the team, and the injury really set me back. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna keep grinding. And I had this one game where I knew I was being evaluated, and I like prayed and I asked God to help me, and the ball was literally bouncing off my knee, or I did the most perfect pass. And when I looked up, I saw it was a perfect pass to the other team. And I was like, Dob, what are you doing? I don't understand. I need to show off, I need to solidify my place on this team. Why, why is the ball literally not bouncing my way? And I soon found out at the end of the spring semester, I walk in for my evaluation, I sit in the chair, and the coaches take a box of Kleenex down from the top of a bookshelf and hand it to me. And I'm like, Well, what is this for? And they said, Hey, Catherine, you know, since we had this great season, we've had a lot of recruits come in, and we just don't think that you have the confidence to make it at this level. So we're cutting you from the team. And I was like, What? I was what can I do? Do it, can I work harder? Like, can I can I like red shirt? Can I can I be the laundry girl? Like, how what what do you mean? And they said, no, you know, we'll we'll set you up wherever you need to go, but you're you don't have a place on this team anymore. And in in that one instant, my entire identity was gone. I mean, my friends, my parents, they would literally introduce me as this is Catherine, she plays Division I soccer. This is Catherine, she's a soccer player. Like that's that's who I was. That was my whole identity. It was my badge that I wore, my jersey that I wore to the world. But all of a sudden, that whole identity was just stripped away from me. And I walked out of the office and I saw my teammates, and they're like, hey, how's it going? And I just said, I've been cut. And they were in absolute shock, and I was in absolute shock. So I ran to the bathroom and I hid in the handicap stall, and I just collapsed on the floor and sobbed in a huddle because the door to my dream had slammed shut and it was locked from the inside. I went back to my dorm and I pulled out my Bible and I was like, God, talk to me! Like, what? What is going on? And I took my finger and I opened the book and I just put my finger down. And God sent me a Bible verse in that moment, which was Isaiah 41, 10. And in the middle of that identity, death, humiliation, and grief, he was there. He was comforting me. And the verse says, So do not fear, for I'm with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I didn't feel strong, I didn't feel brave, I didn't feel chosen. I did feel held, but part of me died that day. And once you've lived through the death of a dream, you recognize that feeling when it comes again. I had that feeling, that premonition come to me another 20, 10 years later. It was in the middle of a the dream I had pivoted to. I had pivoted from, okay, maybe I'm not meant to keep ascending in my sport, but I'll go play internationally, I'll go coach, but now I need to make my priority getting married and being a youth leader and a young life leader. And I was really, really invested in that. And so I was at a summer camp and leading helping lead the camp, and all my kids were in the room with me, and I went to sleep, and I was awoken in the middle of the night by a real dream. I woke up like in just a sweat, and I've never felt a heaviness like I felt in that moment, and I could barely breathe. I knew that something was desperately, desperately wrong. And I literally wandered the halls of the camp praying over the camp because I knew something very bad had happened or was going to happen. In my dream, an actual hurricane had swept through our church and people were lost. The building was torn apart. But in the midst of these faces and these names being called out that were lost, me and my kids were pushed into this dark room where we were having things thrown at us, but they kept missing us. And a man at the end started whistling, and we followed him out a stairwell through a locked door that he opened for us and back into the light. The message of the dream was that a hurricane was coming, but that me and my children were going to survive and come out safe. But everything behind us was gone. I didn't know what that dream signified, but I sure found out later. And I actually clung to the message of that dream. It gave me a lot of hope in the dark times that I was about to face. Because a few weeks later, I was on the set of my film Touched by Grace. I was newly pregnant, nobody knew it yet, and I was an extra in a funeral scene of all things. I remember sitting there and I was trying to like be an actress as an extra, and I was like, think of something sad, think of something sad. And I was trying to find a memory that would make me sad, but I couldn't. And I had just been accepted into UCLA's writing program. So everything was rising, everything was beautiful. But the next day, everything began to fall apart. I was sitting in my bedroom. It was a summer day. So the kids were home. They were happily playing downstairs. I got to sleep in. I was writing in my quiet time notebook. And all of a sudden, my phone just started dinging like crazy with text messages. And they said, Katherine, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And I was so confused. Everything at my house was fine. The only person that was missing was my husband. And I texted back, what are you talking about? I'm fine. What's wrong? And it's then that I was told that my cousin, who I'm we both share a name and we're similar in age, had been killed in Afghanistan. And that kicked off an insane period of my life where, in just a two-year span, one of the people in my dream, he died of cancer two weeks later from my he helped set up my husband my cousin's funeral. And then he passed away. And then from then on, over 40 people died. Babies and old people, young people in their 30s, teenagers from our ministry. And it was a funeral a week for two years. I had a funeral maternity dress, and that just every Saturday I would suit up in this funeral outfit. The ministry grew really tense, and the ground was unsteady, the air was thick. And so I took my grief, I was super hormonal from the pregnancy, and I poured all my grief into a screenplay for my UCLA class. And it was this beautiful, perfect little screenplay. Like my classmates really buoyed me up at that time and gave me a lot of hope. And it was the one bright thing in this season of loss. But the hurricane wasn't finished. It wasn't just one dream that died. Some dreams die quietly, some die with a whisper, and some die in an empty sanctuary with all the lights off and the air still. You know, I was a pastor's daughter who married a pastor. My mother was a pastor's daughter who married a pastor. Her mother was a pastor's daughter who married a pastor. And her mother was a pastor's daughter who married a pastor. And I was so proud and honored to be part of that heritage. I helped build nursery programs and vacation Bible schools and youth groups and drama teams. I helped build college groups and mothers of preschoolers' groups and an entire church building. I wrote devotionals and led icebreaker games and started Bible studies that started Bible studies. It was and is, it was a holy dream to be this pastor's wife and pastor's daughter. It was a holy calling. But one year after these years of strain that started with this cascade with my cousin's death, years of perseverance as things began to unravel and grief began to just crack through and and and sweep through the church, just like in my dream. I found myself sitting in a chair in the church I had helped design and approve and fund and build and create. And I could no longer hide the suffering I was enduring with a big fake smile plastered on my face. And in that moment, there was a conversation where words were said that could be forgiven, but never taken back. Not with that sudden howl of collapsing grief like when I got cut from the soccer team or the news of an actual death or bad diagnosis of a loved one. It's this kind of dream death that ends in a slow, brutal, final moment when you realize that the dream that you built your life around is no longer possible. It's about the straw that breaks the camel's back. And in that moment, in that sanctuary, in that conversation, nobody knew it but me. But I broke quietly and completely. I remember at that time there were a lot of people that kept coming to me, and they were wanting to be me to be the person I had been before. And they would come to me with this expectation that I was gonna like give them wisdom or give them a smile or give them affirmation. And I remember on one of the days that I had just gotten the worst conversation, the worst thing that's almost ever been said to me in my whole life. And this person was like, Why don't you like me? You know, I think you don't like me because you're you're just by yourself. And and and I was like, I don't have time to think about whether I like you or not. I I'm trying to breathe here. Like, how about you see that I'm I'm really like, I don't, I can't help myself right now. And I remember one day, even on vacation, like looking out at the lake, and the lake seemed so peaceful, and my pain was so bad that I just I didn't do it. I just wanted to walk into that lake and just keep walking, you know, and because I I needed the pain, the emotional pain to stop, and I I couldn't see a way out, I couldn't see a pivot or a hope or a new thing because I was so sad and so devastated by the loss of the things that I loved. You know, I kept breathing and God rewarded that. I got pregnant with a beautiful little girl. I won my I entered a contest last minute, my screenplay won. I got flown to Hollywood, I walked the red carpet, I was at Paramount Studios, and I was like, I'm so glad that I kept breathing because I would have missed all of this wonderful story. So it seemed like maybe the dream was revived again. But like I said, there's moments in time where you think you're having a false, you're having a victory, but it's a false victory, right? And I'm very grateful for that whole time. But when my screenplay was about to be produced, it was uh we almost produced two separate times, and then big international things happened, big national things happened far beyond my control. And the politics were very complicated, the industry shifted, and my project slipped away again. It got beaten out by a different screenplay, and I learned that it was the other screenplay was going into production, and I just was like sobbing in my living room. I was like, Chris, I can't go through this again. I I I grieved the death of my screenplay and I persevered, and then I and I was brave enough to hope again, and now I'm watching it die right in front of me, all over again. And even worse, the other script became good for them, but it became an Oscar-nominated film, and it was sort of like whichever screenplay was chosen was gonna be nominated for an Oscar that year because of the politics of the time. And so everyone had known about my screenplay. So people kept texting me and calling me and tagging me about this other movie and congratulating me for a film that wasn't mine. So every message was this reminder of the stillbirth of my story, my beautiful story that sits in a drawer unseen and has only been read and acknowledged by, you know, a handful of people in the world. And there was nothing wrong with it. It was perfect. It was this beautiful good dream. It's just circumstances far beyond my control. And the verse that lived in my chest during that season, it wasn't a victory verse, it was Psalm 13. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? That was the prayer of a dream that died twice. And that part of me, she died too. You know, there's a line from Reeve Lindbergh, who's the daughter of Charles Lindbergh and Aaron Morrow Lindbergh, whose first son famously was kidnapped and murdered. And Reeve also experienced the loss of a child. So she knew grief intimately. And this quote has stayed with me for years. It was a conversation that she had had with her mother, and her mother had told her that the horror fades, but the sadness remains. And she was right. The horror does fade, the shock, the disorientation, the free fall of those defining dream death moments. But the sadness becomes something else. It becomes a companion, it becomes a familiar presence, it becomes a quiet friend who sits beside you on a cloudy day and asks nothing of you but honesty. Reeve Lindbergh described her sadness as an old dog sleeping in the corners. And I understand that now. In my own life, I sometimes find myself saying, Come here, sadness. Come here. Come sit with me and bring me company. We've known each other a long time. Come here, sadness, come on. Here's my dog. I hope you can see her if you're watching this or hear her panting. Come sit with me. Keep me company. We've known each other a long time. And we have nothing to fear from each other. There are parts of me that died with each dream. Parts of me that I will never get back. Parts of me that I had to bury without a funeral, without almost anybody knowing that those parts of me were gone. Maybe you know that feeling too. Maybe you've buried a dream. Maybe you've buried a version of yourself. Maybe you buried a future that you thought you were walking toward. If so, come. You know, today, if you can take a moment to name the dream that you lost. Not to fix it, not to resurrect it, not to make any meaning out of it. Sometimes it's just nice to say the name. Just to acknowledge it. Write it down. Whisper it. Sometimes all you can do is whisper it. I say, I can't talk about that anymore. You put it in your special little box and you hold it in your hands for a moment like a beautiful, fragile butterfly. And you let yourself feel the sadness without rushing past it. Because sadness is not your enemy, it's your companion, it's your witness, it's your truth teller, and it deserves a seat at your table, at the time table. I'm not gonna pull you out of it because next time we're gonna step into the cocoon. Episode seven is called the Dream Cocoon because it's the beginning of the beginning. It's what the psalmist means when he writes, He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. That's from Psalm 126.6. The cocoon is the place where the weeping happens and the seed is still in your hand, the place where nothing looks alive, and yet everything is being remade in the dark. But we're not there yet. Before we step into the cocoon, before we step into the cocoon, I want to leave you with the image that has carried me through the deepest winters of my life. Come here, sadness. Come on, come on, sadness. Come sit with me and keep me company. We've known each other a long time, and we have nothing to fear from each other. But for now, stay with me in the sadness. Let it sit beside you, let it breathe with you, let it be your familiar friend. I'll meet you in the cocoon.