I’m not a dreamer. Oh, while I'm awake I dream big, but when I sleep, I sleep, usually.
When I have a dream it tends to be big-as-life and a little creepy. The stick-with-me, work their way under my skin far-too-realistic type dreams.
In particular, I played a dog, and my bed the fire hydrant…another, I played a sleepy little girl and my parents’ bed played the toilet. To quote Dave Barry, “I am not making this up.”
When I was nine or ten, I read The Hiding Place. Probably a bad idea in hind-sight since it haunted me with the mental pictures of evil men, emaciated, tortured captives and the realities of war. My youngest brother, eight years my junior, was small and helpless, and my older sister/maternal instincts were tautly tuned to protect and nurture. My first vivid, too-real, terrifying dream involved dive-bombing planes, helplessness and the brutal death of my parents leaving me to care for my baby brother. That I can still remember it, thirty years later…well, let’s just say it felt real.
Several dreams later I reached adulthood.
When my second baby and I returned from the hospital, I wore a proud smile, the tag “mother of two” and a healthy dose of responsibility. The dream that woke me in a cold sweat and haunted me for months involved an icy bridge, a plunge into a river and a frantic attempt to remove my children from car seats as the water climbed higher and higher.
Several years ago, God asked me to spend some time fasting. I practiced and prepared for a long one. My first night without food, I woke as I hovered between awake and REM. As I prayed, I scarfed Krispy Kreme dream donuts, and as I fully awakened I had the sense that God wouldn’t let me break the fast that He’d called me to complete.
Early this morning I woke during a horrible dream. Too fresh to share it, but it required prayer to bring my heart back into normal rhythm. A random, creepy dream, not about the protective maternal instinct, or the awareness of my own pathetic weaknesses, which makes it worse on so many levels. Shudder.
Am I alone? Are you, too, haunted by dreams past or present?
When I have a dream it tends to be big-as-life and a little creepy. The stick-with-me, work their way under my skin far-too-realistic type dreams.
In particular, I played a dog, and my bed the fire hydrant…another, I played a sleepy little girl and my parents’ bed played the toilet. To quote Dave Barry, “I am not making this up.”
When I was nine or ten, I read The Hiding Place. Probably a bad idea in hind-sight since it haunted me with the mental pictures of evil men, emaciated, tortured captives and the realities of war. My youngest brother, eight years my junior, was small and helpless, and my older sister/maternal instincts were tautly tuned to protect and nurture. My first vivid, too-real, terrifying dream involved dive-bombing planes, helplessness and the brutal death of my parents leaving me to care for my baby brother. That I can still remember it, thirty years later…well, let’s just say it felt real.
Several dreams later I reached adulthood.
When my second baby and I returned from the hospital, I wore a proud smile, the tag “mother of two” and a healthy dose of responsibility. The dream that woke me in a cold sweat and haunted me for months involved an icy bridge, a plunge into a river and a frantic attempt to remove my children from car seats as the water climbed higher and higher.
Several years ago, God asked me to spend some time fasting. I practiced and prepared for a long one. My first night without food, I woke as I hovered between awake and REM. As I prayed, I scarfed Krispy Kreme dream donuts, and as I fully awakened I had the sense that God wouldn’t let me break the fast that He’d called me to complete.
Early this morning I woke during a horrible dream. Too fresh to share it, but it required prayer to bring my heart back into normal rhythm. A random, creepy dream, not about the protective maternal instinct, or the awareness of my own pathetic weaknesses, which makes it worse on so many levels. Shudder.
Am I alone? Are you, too, haunted by dreams past or present?
