family life

The cost of dreams

JOY journal

“Don’t look at yourself in the same old way — take another picture. Shoot the stars off in your own backyard — don’t look any further.” Carly Simon, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

When I came down to the kitchen one recent morning, my husband had an unusual set up surrounding the dishwasher.

This favorite book, the sixth in the Anne of Green Gables series, features a mid-life Anne. Kid problems, overwork problems, marriage problems. Even in fiction, there’s a cost to a “house of dreams.” 🙂

Its door was propped halfway open, supported by a rolling office chair. Doors of surrounding cabinets were flung wide. The nearby faucet was purposefully dripping and a fan was pointed at the pipes that bring water straight into the kitchen from our home’s main line.

A bit odd. A configuration that forced breakfast into a sideways-walking, single-file kind of thing. But, I was in no way complaining. The last time it got this cold (-3 Fahrenheit) and stayed that way for several days, those very pipes burst, flooding our kitchen.

This old house is, in so many ways, my house of dreams. But, like any dream, it carries an ongoing cost. For the house, that cost comes in maintenance. After standing nearly 100 years, something is always chipping, peeling, collapsing, leaking. Always.

We love the house. We love the neighborhood. Both suit our family size and life. So, we continue to pay the cost of this particular dream.

Always. That’s a critical word. The best stuff — the stuff that dreams are made of — always carries a cost. A house. Marriage. Children. A writing career. A relationship with God.

There are days, when it might be tempting to walk away from any or all of the above. To find something easier. A better dream. Maybe even someone else’s dream.

Real grown-ups don’t bolt, however. They haul out a fan and an office chair. They do whatever is necessary to keep the dream alive. For always.

P.S. If Valentine’s Day has your thoughts turning toward love, you may enjoy my February micro-blog posts on Facebook @ noraedingerbooks. Like or follow this page to have a look at God’s love delivered fresh to your newsfeed. If you’re not on Facebook, the Fresh Mercy posts also scroll at the bottom of all pages on this site. Blessings!

Published by JOY journal

After a long career writing for local newspapers — and, on rare occasions, for publications such as The Washington Post — Nora's word life is now focused on blogging and occasional writing projects of special interest. Also the author of several books, Nora lives in Appalachia with her husband and a goodish dog named Finn, who is delighted whenever the family's two adult daughters are home from college.

19 thoughts on “The cost of dreams”

    1. I suspect we all have some failed dreams. I love those scriptures about God restoring the years the locusts have eaten. Abundant life now and a place of no tears in our future, my sister in the Lord. 🙂

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      1. And I loved the reference to Anne of Green Gables. I can’t think of her without thinking of your elegant apology in Lukachukai!

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    1. Sadly, yes. We may have to go to heat tape. Right now, it just winds up being the house trouble spot. The kitchen was redone drastically at some point prior to us. I suspect the pipes were somewhere else in the original layout. Old houses have a lot of secrets. I’ve found a door and three windows that were covered up. 🙂

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      1. I’ve renovated a few. Started this one but a long way from finished. You just start one thing and you find other things under it that need to be done. Is heat tape expensive?

        We have had very high temps this Summer. A cooler day today, my health is recovering before the next onslaught. Last week was too hot to think straight to finish a post. So I had some cups of tea and did it yesterday. Smoke is in the air from the local bushfires, but luckily today we got a little rain. Up North in Queensland they have bad flooding, worst in recorded memory they said. Just out of town here the farmers say the creek dried up, first time ever since white man. (They are 5 th generation). They are buying in water for the dairy cows.

        It’s a crazy country.

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      2. I think the weather is difficult in one way or another pretty much everywhere these days. 😦 In the U.S., videos of Aussies sharing water bottles with koalas keep showing up, even on network news.

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