🏡 The Dream That Wouldn’t Let Go

Time as the first currency of trust

Some dreams refuse to die.
They whisper in the middle of the night. They hum beneath ordinary conversations. They make every temporary solution feel slightly off-kilter.

For years, home was that whisper for us.

When Barry and I left Ohio for Florida, we knew it was temporary.
We had a plan, a map, and a shared fantasy of island mornings and Balinese sunsets. We spent three glorious weeks in Bali right as the world began to shut down. We made it back to Ohio one day before the shelter-in-place order took effect, and while the rest of the world learned to bake sourdough, we built blueprints for a tropical life.

But the body always knows before the brain catches up.
And mine never stopped longing for mountains, for seasons, for the smell of pine after rain.

So we made a pragmatic detour—Florida, the sunshine state, chosen for family and tax benefits. I don’t regret it for a second. Those three years gave me precious time with my sister. But even still, Florida never became home. The air felt too heavy with humidity and politics, and our hearts kept reaching for somewhere greener, slower, aligned.

That longing was a protest in itself.

Time is our only resource we can’t get back, yet society keeps urging us to rush—through work, through growth, through our own becoming. We’re taught to chase the next thing, to measure worth in output, to barely stop long enough to breathe, let alone celebrate.

Protest, in this case, was allowing the dream to unfurl at its own pace.
To choose patience when urgency feels like safety.
To trust that every pause has purpose.

Because “good enough” steals decades.
Because “maybe someday” is a spell that eats your time.

We didn’t know the shape of our next home yet. We only knew it would ask more of us—more patience, more courage, more willingness to be seen wanting something big.

When I found our home online, I wasn’t searching for it; I was just amusing myself.
I was window shopping, the way you do when you think dreaming is safer than deciding. But the moment the photo loaded, something ancient in me stirred.

I could feel the memory of that land in my bones. I told myself it was just curiosity. Barry had never even been to the Pacific Northwest.

But the dream didn’t let go.

A few months later, our 20th wedding anniversary gave us an excuse. We pooled airline points, booked a long weekend, and made a pact: We’re not buying.

You can imagine how that went.

We drove a thousand miles up and down the coast, marveling at trees that looked like cathedrals and snow-capped peaks that caught the sun like stained glass. When the ferry carried us across the bay toward the house, I felt something electric—familiarity, recognition, inevitability.

As the realtor drove off the ferry, I knew every turn she’d make before she made it, as if I’d taken that 6-mile journey every day for years.

Before my feet hit the gravel, I knew: I’m home.

I tried to talk myself out of it. “We’re not buying, Shaneh.” But the land was already speaking my name. Barry disappeared mid-tour, and I found him outside, grinning like a kid. “I found my shop,” he said. That was it. We were both gone.

We made it back to Florida before making an offer—but only just.

That house waited for us. And on the other side of it, every lesson about trust, timing, and capacity was waiting too.

I’ve learned that time is the first currency of trust.
Every dream asks us to prove—not to the world, but to ourselves—that we can stay in devotion long enough to become the person capable of receiving it.

When I look back now, I can see that every detour was part of the preparation.
The years in Ohio built endurance.
The time in Florida built patience.
The move toward Washington built faith.

When you’re walking the long road to a dream, it’s tempting to call it a delay or a diversion.

But sometimes, it’s choreography—
the Universe moving pieces into place for your arrival.

👉 Reflection Prompt
Where have you been calling it a delay when it might actually be divine choreography?
What dream is quietly asking you to stay devoted a little longer?

🔥 Daily Affirmation
I honor divine timing as a form of wealth.
I move at the rhythm of my becoming.
I trust the pauses as sacred preparation.
I am patient with my unfolding and proud of my devotion.
I am becoming the version of me who receives with ease.
I am already on time for my own life.

PS: Profit is Protest—especially when you refuse to rush your becoming.

🎧 Song of the Day: “Landslide” – The Chicks

PPS: Tomorrow, we step into the next act—what happens when you finally say the dream out loud and dare to ask for it. The energy shifts, the air changes, and the becoming begins.