When dreams make us vulnerable

I may have mentioned this before, but I'm married to a dreamer.  My husband is one of those 'ten thousand ideas before breakfast' people.  He has new businesses, inventions, creative solutions to difficult problems, ideas of people to network with and ways to be a hero pulsating through his brain non-stop.  New Year is a perfect example of his well-intentioned dreaming.  One year he wrote down no less than 27 goals for the year.  Sometimes I roll my eyes at him and bring some reality ("No, I'm sorry, but you are not going to be able to meet the President today") but on the odd occasion, I allow myself to dream with him.

We're good at dreaming together.  It's even more exciting when we start to push on doors to see if our dreams can become a reality.  

But when we start to investigate our dreams, we become vulnerable.  In talking to people about our dreams and hearing their responses we feel like we are laying bare our hearts before them and asking them to understand us.  And they often don't.  Sometimes our dreams are trampled across with well-meaning reality.

A lifetime ago our wedding invitations were, very aptly, adorned with this quote from W.B Yeats' poem 'He wishes for the cloths of heaven':

I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Our dreams won't always become a reality.  They may take us in different directions which others don't quite understand.  They might cause us to make unusual decisions.  They sometimes make us look crazy.  We might live life with different priorities to other people.  We might parent our children in different ways because of them.  They make us vulnerable to ridicule.

But if we spread our dreams under your feet and lay our hearts bare before you, please tread softly because our dreams are fragile, precious and God-given and we need you to hold our hands as we tiptoe across and journey into them.