Returning to Your Dreams: What You Thought Was Dead

Written by Rebecca Johnson

There are dreams many of us once carried that we no longer speak about.

Not because they weren’t from God.
Not because they were foolish.
But because life happened.

Somewhere along the way, survival replaced dreaming. Responsibility replaced imagination. And quietly, without a funeral or goodbye, we buried parts of ourselves we once believed God placed inside us.

I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams that feel “dead.”

The ones we tell ourselves we’ve outgrown.
The ones that didn’t survive rejection, disappointment, or delay.
The ones we stopped praying about because hoping started to hurt.

Yet Scripture reminds us that buried does not mean finished.

The Valley of Dry Bones

In Ezekiel 37, the prophet is brought into a valley filled with bones. Not just dead bones, but very dry ones. These bones had been lifeless for a long time. Time had passed. Hope had left.

And God asks a question that feels both impossible and deeply personal:

“Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3)

What strikes me is that God didn’t ask Ezekiel to create something new.
He didn’t ask him to replace what was lost.
He asked him to speak life to what already existed.

Those bones still had structure.
They still had identity.
They were waiting for breath.

I believe many of our dreams are like that.

Dreams We Buried, Not Lost

Some dreams didn’t die because they were wrong.
They died because we didn’t have the language, support, or permission to carry them forward.

Others were buried because they didn’t look like anyone else’s dream.

Growing up, I didn’t have access to computers, printers, or glossy vision boards. The only way I knew how to dream was to draw. I sketched ideas, futures, worlds I hoped to step into one day. Creativity was how God taught me to imagine.

Over the years, I tried to dream the way everyone else dreamed. I tried to plan, map, and envision the “right” way. But something felt off. And it wasn’t until God reminded me of how I used to dream, as a child, that I felt alive again.

God didn’t change His design for me.
I drifted from it.

And maybe you have too.

When Dreams Dry Up

I’m reminded of Death of a Salesman, a story not just about failure, but about chasing a dream that was never yours to begin with. The tragedy isn’t that the dream didn’t work out; it’s that identity became tied to the wrong definition of success.

When we measure our lives by the world’s standards, God-given dreams often wither. Not because they lack purpose, but because they need a different environment to breathe.