When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

Sheridan Voysey is very familiar with the pain of broken dreams – and the beauty of what can come next.  

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“Life is not made of straight lines. Nothing in nature has straight lines – that’s a human-created invention, the perfectly straight line. All else in creation has a curve, it has a kink, it has a twist … and here I am expecting life to go from Point A to Point B in a nice straight line.” 

After the last few years of curveballs and cancelled plans, you may well be wary about making new plans and dreaming new dreams for your life.  

Writer and broadcaster Sheridan Voysey has learned the hard way the pain of a broken dream – and where to go from there. In this conversation about the highs and lows of life, he tells a story of childlessness, giving up a cherished career, and the flourishing that can be found in a life we didn’t plan – including the remarkable twist of his wife Merryn being in the right time and place to help save six million lives.  

“There’s a wonderful proverb: Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And gosh, we now know that when that hope is deferred and deferred and deferred, and another month and another month and another month, and you don’t get what you desperately want, your heart can really become sick. You try that for ten years. But there’s a second part to that proverb that we often forget, and the second part goes: but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. That doesn’t mean the same dream – it can actually be a different one.” 

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Explore: 

Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings 

The Making of Us: Who We Can Become When Life Doesn’t Go As Planned