I Dreamed A Dream

Okay, I know I promised only one Les Mis blog, but I can't resist just one more.  You see, after I watched the concert, I went straight to Amazon.com and ordered the DVD.  My kids have been watching it non-stop!  My two five-year-old boys love it!  This morning they were having a discussion about Jean Valjean.  How many five-year-olds are interested in Jean Valjean?  But, they love it and it makes me smile.  In fact, they are watching it right now.  Anyway, these great songs have been in my mind all week, and I decided that I couldn't overlook one of my all-time favorites.
"I Dreamed A Dream" is sung by Fantine after she has unfairly lost her job and she is desperate for a way to earn money to send to the innkeepers who are looking after her daughter.  "I dreamed a dream in days gone by, when hope was high and life worth living ..."  She goes on to talk about how it all went wrong.  Nothing went as she had dreamed and her hopes had all been torn apart.  In the end she laments, "Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."
This is a song I can relate to.  Maybe you can too.  While I was growing up, I had a dream.  That dream was to get married to a wonderful man who would love me and take care of me.  After our marriage, we would want to begin having children.  I would get pregnant and figure out some cute and clever way of telling my husband the big news.  As the baby grew and began moving around, my husband would lay his hands over my growing belly and we would laugh as he felt the kicks of our baby.  The day would arrive when I would wake up in the night with the news that "it was time".  We would drive to the hospital where he would hold my hand as our perfect baby entered the world.  The next day we would take our baby home and two years later it would all happen again.
Well, my hopes were torn apart and life killed the dream that I had nurtured all those years.  But - what if - just maybe, I had been holding on to the wrong dream?  Not a bad dream, just not the right one for me.  It never occurred to me to dream about meeting an amazing birth mother who would entrust the baby that had grown inside of her, to me.  I never thought to dream about the kind of love that has nothing to do with the ties of blood, but comes from deep inside your heart that once felt empty but now overflows.  I never dreamed about the testimony of forever that would be written on my heart as I watched my tiny 2 pound 8 ounce son struggle for life for 2 months in an incubator before we could bring him home.  These were never the dreams that I had, but they became my reality, and once I grieved for my old dream and then let it go, I discovered a wonderful life with a bright future that was better than I could have come up with on my own.