Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7 We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
8 His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
9 Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
10 When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” 11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind….
17b So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. 18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. 20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams…”
28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels[b] of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
This lesson in the bible is a reminder that not all dreams come true in a perfect way.
Joseph had so many things go wrong. His brothers hated him, he had strange dreams that caused them to hate him more, and then was sold to men from a different country. However, he held on to his dream without wavering. Here he was, in a strange land many miles away from his family, and yet he continued on with a knowing that his dreams came from God and would be fulfilled.
Life does not always hand dreams that are encased in perfection and straightforward answers. They include high mountains, steps backward, pain, and despair. Just as Joseph experienced, as God gave him a dream, there was a chain of circumstances that made him dig deeper into his trust in the Lord than he ever had been before. Every happening seemed wrong, but they all led to the dream God had given him. There is no perfect life, no perfect gift, and no perfect answer. God, in his love, sees what problems I am facing, allows things to happen to strengthen me, and in the end, if I trust, find peace and fulfillment in his plan.
Although I have never experienced anything so lonely as being cast into a pit by my very family, the experience that happened in the last year of my life taught me that God’s plan and dreams he provides are not a smooth, understandable path. In February 2025, after running around in the school gym for about an hour, I went outside to cool off in the negative degrees. Rounding a corner, I evidently hit a patch of ice, and everything went black. I remember feeling nauseous and limping to my vehicle. I experienced some word slurring, but it seemed to clear. I went home, went to sleep, woke up the next day with maybe a slight headache, and took the morning off. Sometime during this time, I do have a slight memory of the light feeling so bright and trying not to vomit after my multiple-mile runs. Two weeks later, I discovered that sitting in lecture was so overstimulating that I had to leave. I was unable to follow the course of the lecture and felt oddly disconnected from my body. Over the next few weeks, I lost my ability to read and remember. Walking became so difficult, as lifting my legs was nearly impossible. I was so foggy in my brain, I was not even thinking in full thoughts. My mom had to come live with me, drive me to class, and overall, hold me up. I went to vestibular rehab, which was slow and unpleasant.
This explanation leads me to how this step on the road felt like the ultimate derailment of my dreams. I had been building castles in the sky of becoming a high acuity nurse in a unit. However, I was barely able to read and struggled to even put together enough thought to take care of my patients during my clinical rotations. My personal walk with God had been on the decline over the last few years, and I became so depressed, I wondered why I was alive. I thought back to a prayer I had prayed that God would cause something to happen to me that would bring me closer to Him. This seemed like the answer to that prayer, as over the last year, I have drawn from His grace and become a more trusting and faithful follower. I believe I was led to nursing by God, but I took that dream into my own hands and was not following His plan. I built my own agenda. Speaking with the pastors of my church before my concussion, I was urged to lay it all down. I thought I did, but God called me to more. In April 2025, I was put on a medication. This medication caused me to cry incessantly and feel so depressed. I went to Taryn, my instructor, and tearfully told her I was quitting nursing. She urged me to continue on, and they would help me. What followed were scary times of losing peripheral vision, severe instability when walking, and severe nausea. However, with the support of my family, instructors, and God, I made it through the spring quarter of my Junior year. I refused to quit my job, as I wanted to be independent, so I continued working through the summer. I would leave work with my heart rate extremely high and a strange buzzing feeling in my head. My headaches were so severe that I was unable to do anything besides lie on my bed after work. Around the end of August, I humbled myself and asked for a leave of absence from my job. I came home, went on a trip to the coast with my parents, and ultimately, resigned from my position at the Boys and Girls Club at the very beginning of September. This started an involving and humbling healing journey.
I have learned so many things from my experience and also a renewed vision of Jesus as my Savior. I have seen my dreams come true in miraculous ways. Although my dreams were given to me by God, I have had to be willing for people in my life and allow others to serve me. Joseph was sent to prison for a crime he never committed, but most unimaginably, he found his way to the dream God had created for him. I feel like God has seen me through such difficult times, walked with me, led me, carried me, and spoken to me even when I was so depressed I was unsure of what I should do. God speaks in quiet and understandable ways, not in earth-shattering signs. He taught us this when He was born in the stable. The ones who were awake were told, but the ones who slept and were not watching did not even know of the miracle in that ordinary stable. God is ever by the side of His children and will see them through the circumstances of their lives. Ultimately, God is a dream-giver and a faithful God who will see them through to completion. Unfailing faith, even when it is small, can grow to an amazing outcome.
nursing jan 