When That Thing You Want is Always Just Out of Reach

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This is the first of a four post series about how to deal with moving forward when that thing you want is always just out of reach. I’m guessing if you’ve been around for any length of time, you may have experienced this at one time or another, or, perhaps this sort of thing is still in your future.

I have written about this a bit before in posts like When Someone Else is Living Your Dream, I’m Really Going to Be Okay (and you are, too), When God Says No Again, When You Can’t Possibly Be Hearing God Right, and When Making the Right Choice Breaks Your Heart. If you read these posts, you will see that I already have plenty of experience in dealing with disappointment.

The interesting thing about disappointment and life not going as we have planned or in the way we would like it to is that we can’t change it. Try as hard as we may, other than making adjustments, it is a rarity that we can do anything about things that are outside of our reach.

However, we can control how we respond to these things.

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Let me first start with a confession, which starts with a number.

365.

This is the approximate number of days that the thing I want has been pushed back. Yet again, that thing I want is just without my reach…and it was so close that I could almost feel it in between my fingers. My heart had already started to sing.

Here’s another number.

2738.

That is the number of days that I have been chasing after this certain dream, if it ever does come to fruition next year.

Quick math would tell you that this dream will be seven and a half years in the making if it ever becomes my reality next year.

That’s a dreadfully long time.

There have been days over the past few months of realizing that my dream is still further away that the weight of waiting another day, another ten days, another series of days, and weeks, and months has felt like more than I can bear.

While there were days that I just ran away from this new reality, literally, I was still left having to face this reality square in the eye because after all, no matter how far I ran this reality was still here waiting for me.

After picking myself back up from some of the lowest lows that I’ve ever felt, these are the first four steps that I’ve taken to cope with my reality.

These are the things you can do when that thing you want is always just out of reach.

Breathe

It sounds easy, it sounds basic, and it sounds too simple, but in my most recent experience, I had to remind myself to breathe. My heart was broken, my foundation was shaken, and my spirit was crushed. I had to remind myself to breathe. This is the first step.

Don’t feel guilty about hurting

There are times that our hurt can feel trivial in light of what others are facing. I have a cousin who is fighting a losing battle with cancer. I have another friend who is facing the reality of burying her son before he is even grown. The list can go on and on.

At first I felt guilty that I was allowing my hurt to devastate me. But, then I realized that there is no measuring stick when it comes to pain, grief, and extreme sadness, despair, and utter confusion. My pain, my hurt, my devastation was and still is my reality some days. I learned that I don’t need to feel guilty about hurting in response to something that could be viewed as trivial in light of war, disease, poverty, and everything else the world around us experiences. My pain was and is real to me. Therefore, it is real. Your pain will be real to you. Therefore, it is real.

Grieve

When something happens that is unexpected and disappointing, I find that I always have to take time to grieve. In all reality, especially in this most recent case, I am grieving the death of a dream. Things are not the way I wanted them to be. Things are not the way I thought they would be. And, I am being asked to wait again. And perhaps, this time the wait will end up being too long to keep pursuing this same dream. Perhaps it is no longer a dream delayed, but the death of a dream. Whatever the outcome proves to be, when that thing you want is always snatched from you, take the time to grieve the death of a dream.

Process

Just like you need to take the time to grieve, you also need to take the time to process through the flood of emotions that you will no doubt be feeling when the rug is pulled out from under you. Processing looks different for different people, and I find it to be greatly related to personality type.

I am an extrovert, but I need to recharge as an introvert. That is greatly the reason that I needed to “run away” as I called it earlier. I simply cannot process things, especially these life-changing things with others around me. I simply must process things alone, but perhaps you need to process around other people. Maybe you need to process with the help of others. However it is that you process things, recharge, or fill your tank, the fourth step in coping with things that are drastically different from what you had planned is to process in the way that works best for you.

I think we can certainly all agree that life is full of bumps, roadblocks, and unexpected detours. In most cases, they are simply unavoidable. However, the longer I am alive and the more my expectations, hopes, and dreams are challenged, the better I get at learning to cope with them.

These are the first four things I find essential in coping with life when that thing you want is always just out of reach.

Tomorrow, we will move forward with four more steps to follow.