The Dream That Would Not Die: The Story Behind the Song
In 2017 my mother passed away, and not long after, I walked through an unexpected divorce. It was a season of profound loss — the kind that rearranges everything you thought was stable.
That summer I traveled to Utah to take my sons to visit their father. While they were there, I stayed with one of my closest friends.
One morning, I had a dream.
In the dream, I heard a melody playing in my mind. To my right, I sensed a man standing beside me. I couldn’t see his face, but he was collaborating with me on a song. He kept writing lyrics in simple, haiku-like lines on a sheet of paper in front of us.
When I woke up, I grabbed my phone and hummed the melody into my voice recorder before it could slip away. Then I reached for a notepad and began writing. I couldn’t remember every word from the dream, but I remembered the main lines — and as I wrote, the rest of the song flowed onto the page in a matter of minutes.
I went to my friend’s piano, picked out the melody, recorded it again, and sang it for her. She loved it.
But the song wasn’t the only thing born in that kitchen.
Sitting there talking with her, something shifted inside me. I had no home of my own. My car barely worked. My life felt stripped down to the studs. And yet, in that moment, I suddenly knew I had everything.
I even joked, “I’ve got this muse man in my head feeding me lyrics.”
And then it hit me — deeper than a thought. God had me. He had always had me. And He always would.
In that moment, I stepped into a kind of trust I had never known before. A profound surrender that has carried me ever since.
Two days later, I met David Kuhns online. (Btw, Dave has written 1,000’s of haiku!)
Our whirlwind courtship led to our marriage the following year in the Nashville Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In time, Dave literally helped restore me to the home and property I had once designed and built — the place I thought I had lost forever. And in every sense of the word, he feels like home.
Fast forward to 2026.
With the help of AI, I can now take the melody I hummed into my phone years ago, pair it with the lyrics born from that dream, describe the instrumentation and vocal styling I hear in my heart — and suddenly, the song comes to life.
What began as a melody in a season of loss has become a fully realized duet about love that endured until the right time.
I have tears in my eyes every time I hear it.
I hope you enjoy The Dream That Would Not Die.
