Dreams

DREAMS

Today on the way to hockey practice my daughter and I discussed dreams.  Our pastor also talked a bit about our dreams this morning.  He said that we always had to test our thoughts and dreams to see if they were true, noble etc.  I have many dreams and nightmares that I just discard because there’s no truth to them but I do not believe that this should cause us to discard the precious dreams God gives us. 

The discussion started with me asking my daughter if she could draw me a picture.  I wanted a long red brick house with a veranda all along the front and the roof covering the veranda.  Just a one-story building, no basement, no second floor.  This building was standing east and west, on the west end there was a concrete pathway leading south for about 50ft and there was a square red brick building which had a flat roof and a water tank on the top.  About 50ft west of the main house which I described first was another small house facing the main house with a covered veranda on the east side and from that building there was also a concrete path leading to the main building which connected to the path that led to the tank house.  If you could get a birds eye view of this, there were a lot of trees in the back.  To the north of the building and in amongst these trees there was a path leading to the north starting on the east side of the building.  This path was leading a little bit east but mostly north to a dock that was build onto a lake.  It was a narrow wooden dock with a bigger square patio type dock on the end.  On this dock there were several men, approximately 5 of them, working to save someone who had fallen into the lake a little ways from the dock. Is there someone out there who can draw this for me?

One of these five men was my husband some of the others were in-laws or maybe even my brothers.  They recovered the body and I remember it lying on the dock lifeless but it wasn’t anyone I knew and I don’t remember any sadness but only admiration for the bravery of my loved ones. In my dream I stood east of the tank house facing north and looking toward the house.  Out of the house walked my mother-in-law and towards the tank house stood my sister-in-law.  I knew who these women were, I knew they were my family and I could tell they knew me, it was this feeling of being completely known, not who people thought I was or who I wanted to be, simply me, exactly me, no hero or brat just me.  I could tell I belonged and was so loved by this family but I didn’t recognize them and had never seen them before.  My mother-in-law looked over at me, seeing the questioning look on my face, assuming I was looking for my husband, she said, “your husband will be back shortly’”.  I looked over to the little house towards the west knowing that was our home, my husband and mine, and saw my husband standing on the veranda looking at me with so much love.  I started walking towards him and he came to meet me.  We met on the concrete path close to the tank house.  I walked into his arms and he gave me such a loving warm hug.  Overwhelmed by the love, I started to cry and told him, “I know you are my family and I can feel the love but I have amnesia, I don’t remember any of you so you will have to help me”.  With that I woke up.  O man! Did I ever wish I could go back to sleep and feel that love again.

I meditate on this dream a lot.  Since Roderick moved to heaven I have often talked about the great love people who have visions of heaven or have gone to heaven when they died but then were resuscitated have felt.  That’s one of the things they all seem to have in common.  They talk about being loved and feeling loved with so great a love, greater then they have ever felt before, I know Roderick feels that love now too and he not only feels it but he also sees and knows that that same love is surrounding us whether we feel it or not.  I felt like God wanted to give me a little taste of this love with this dream. 

After I told my daughter this dream she told me she had a dream last night that Roderick gave her a hug.  “We were in an arena and walked into this dressing room.  Roderick sat on the bench and was undressing from hockey”. 

“He got up and gave you a hug?” I asked.

“Yes” she said.

I told her another dream that I had and she said that I had interesting dreams.  I told her she did too.  She often tells us about her dreams in the morning.

“But yours have meaning” she said.

I told her only because I meditate on them and think about what they could mean.  “It’s no different then yours when I wake up.  But when I meditate on them and think about what I can learn from them they become interesting with meaning.  I also have nightmares that are scary but I know those are lies so I discard them. 

That is so with everything in life whether they be dreams, thoughts, actions or whatever, we have to test them whether they are true, noble, just etc. and meditate only on those that are.

So to all of you who know Roderick out there, if you ever have a dream about Roderick or anything in that regard, (my dream didn’t have Roderick in it but is still a part of his story) even if it’s just two sentences, I would love to hear it.  It doesn’t matter if it seems important or not just anything let me know.  Lets see what kind of collection we can come up with.