Only a Dream?

Ever since I can remember, I've felt like God speaks to me through dreams. I remember my first case of deja vu when I was in kindergarten: our class lesson on Moses seemed so familiar, down to the last details. I remember not long after that dreaming about middle-eastern men surrounding men with guns drawn in a great arena, waking up, and naturally scurrying to my parents' bed. I remember my sophomore year of high school, at our old house on Dateland Ave. in Palm Bay, I had several dreams on the week of Easter that were so vivid, so deep and realistic, that I remember them in great detail to this day. Last night was the latest.

Meghan is always concerned about safety, about making sure that every door is locked, that the garage is closed, and that windows are shut. I'm always aware of these things too, but it's not the first thing on my mind. However, last night I found myself in the middle of a very graphic dream that had to do with this very thing. I was standing in our living room talking with a random character from a game that I enjoy playing (I'm not sure if there's deeper meaning to this, but I was playing it just before bed) as I stood near the front door of our house. It was nighttime. Suddenly, in my mind's eye, I watched the lock start to slowly turn behind me. "Dream Me" took notice and whirled around, twisting it back into the locked position. However, the resistance on the other side didn't stop, and I found myself in a battle with this unseen force to keep my house safe and protected. They tried to turn the handle, to unlock the door, and to barge their way in, but I held on with everything that I had, and even had to get help from the random character to make sure it stayed shut.

I woke up and my heart was pounding. I immediately wondered if this was just a dream, or if it was God's way of waking me up to some very real terror. All I could think of was what I would do if it was real; what would I do if someone had invaded my house? How would I protect my home and my family? With all this racing through my mind, I tried to calm myself down and remember that it was only a dream. Suddenly, I could swear that I heard the front door open. I froze. It was the dead of the night, somewhere around five in the morning, and I was terrified. I didn't know if I was just imagining it, or if I had really heard it. I lied there in dead silence, waiting to hear something, anything, trying to sharpen my senses in the darkness, trying to quiet my heartbeat. Soon, though, the sleep overtook me again and Meghan's alarm went off for her to get up. As she was in the shower, I pressed my ear against the door, trying to hear anything that may be lurking in the rest of the house. Finally trying my luck, I cracked the bedroom door, looked through the house, and found it just the way we had left it the night before. It was all just a dream...

It was all so real. It was one of the scariest things that I've ever dreamt, and I've dreamt some pretty scary things. But the more that I thought about it through the day, and even in that moment, I knew that it all had a deeper meaning. I've come to realize that the home is my family, our marriage, our home together, Meghan and I. And the door: it's the gateway to that home, allowing various things in and out. The lock is the measures that we have in place to protect that family, that marriage, that home. The random character? Maybe that's Jesus... he seems the most likely candidate. And that force... that force on the other side of the door... that's all the things that try to invade our life, to invade our home and terrorize us, to strike fear at our hearts where we should feel safest. And there I am, holding onto the handle and the lock, struggling and fighting to keep that door shut and our home safe.

As I've thought about it all today, those feelings and those scary, silent moments haven't left me. I've kept reminding myself of them in order to make sure that I don't forget. I don't want to forget what it felt like to be helpless, to feel out of control, and to know that the only thing standing between our family's safety and our fear is God. Sometimes in life it takes the "crisis moments" to bring us closer to him and to force us to acknowledge his presence, but I don't think that God wants me to wait for that moment to see him. I think he wants me to know, now, that he's here, and that he's always going to be right there alongside me, keeping that door closed and keeping me and my family safe. But at the same time, he wants me to know that I have to fight too, that I have to fight every single day to make sure that those protection measures stay in place. I have to be the man that my family needs me to be in order to keep our marriage from invasion, to keep our home from fear, and to make sure that we stand close to God. Otherwise, that force creeps in, that fear returns, and we'll be left with our hearts pounding, wondering what we can possibly do to escape it all. I never want to know what that situation really feels like.

It had been a long time since my last "poignant" dream where I knew God was clearly trying to speak to me. I honestly couldn't even tell you what the last one was. But this lesson, this dream, is something that I won't ever forget. The feelings may fade, but the lesson has been learned. I hear you, God, loud and clear.