There's not really a dignified way to explain dreams, is there? Well, at least I try here. And if not, I hope you find the experience amusing.
(If you *really* want to laugh, hit the tag at the bottom of this entry & go read about the dream I had with Nick Saban a year ago. That's some funny stuff.)
So, in my dream, I was spending some one-on-one time with Rick Warren out at his church's facilities in California -- picking his brain, asking him questions. The last thing I remember asking was this, pretty much verbatim:
"I'd never heard this until recently, but I understand that you made a 40-year commitment to lead the Saddleback Church. (He's nodding in agreement. And I can sense that he senses where the question is going, so I say...) I know that a lot of folks would like to know what you plan to do after that. What I would like to know is this: will you ever step higher?"
For my HU friends who took Monte's "Missionary Anthropology" class & saw the video of him about to leave Kenya, you probably snickered. But I was serious in my dream.
Pastor Rick hemmed & hawed. But then he said, "Well, if I could ever serve my country as President, that would be pretty high, too."
Is America ready to become a Purpose Driven Nation? Probably not. But we can dream...
Dreams are strange constructs to try to break down. They are sometimes more fanciful & imaginative than anything in the conscious world. And trying to translate them into a conscious stream of thought can sometimes make you sound like you belong in the loony bin. Nevertheless, dreams are revealing, and that's why I've spent time trying to break some of them down here.
The most recent dream I had related to my Mom & her death happened a couple of months ago. And it wasn't really a dream; it was more like a nightmare. I woke up from this nightmare at about 4:00 AM on a Friday morning with tears streaming down my cheeks. It was so shocking to me & emotionally jolting that I could not simply fall back to sleep. That was it -- I was up for the day.
I can't remember enough of the dream to script it out entirely, but I remember enough. The dream involved my Mother and my grandmother (my Dad's deceased mother, or my Mom's deceased mother-in-law) laying side-by-side each on their death beds. It was a large room, and there was lots of white. The room had the feel of an old-timey hospital where they would open the windows & let the breeze flow through the room.
Anyway, there lay my Mom & Grandma. Both on their death beds. Both seemingly in the final hours of their "life," but essentially lifeless. It was the day of their death for both of them. Their faces showed pained expressions -- they were uncomfortable, weak, and their faces were shriveled. They were about to die. It was not a pleasant scene. In fact, it was a horrific scene.
Then the nightmare takes a turn for the weird. This is where you'll have to bear with me. All of a sudden, this dream begins to take the form of me kind of watching a movie trailer. All of a sudden, I'm sort of seeing my mourning portrayed on the silver screen, and I'm watching a preview of an upcoming movie about my experience.
And who is the star of this upcoming feature? None other than Dane Cook. (It's okay -- go ahead and laugh. I know I did.) The one scene I can recall is Dane Cook sort of staring off into the distance as he tries to capture the words & emotions of what I'm feeling about seeing my Mom and Grandma on their death beds. I can almost here a majestic musical score cresting in the background.
And that's all I remember.
Complete Moron
Okay, first, the Dane Cook thing. The only thing I can think is that my mind was so overwhelmed with the horror of death that I needed a comedic release. I personally think that Dane Cook is one of the worst actors & comedians of all time. I don't find him remotely funny. I don't think his movies have any redeeming value. However, the thought of Dane Cook trying to establish some acting "bona fides" by playing a serious role where he tries to convey my emotions on the big screen is hilarious. It's like I was lampooning Dane Cook's anticipated career arc in the middle of my nightmare. And I'm kinda impressed that my subconscious came up with that.
Okay, enough with the comic relief. Back to the real subject matter.
I think that at least one thing people who haven't experienced loss need to understand about it is how utterly horrific is the experience of the death of a love one. It is a terrorizing, haunting experience. I don't say that to scare anyone. But it is a traumatic experience.
People who are unfamiliar with death need to understand this. I know that I did not understand it before this experience. I'd hear people talk about violence on TV, and I didn't understand what the big deal was. I'd heard people mention how soldiers coming back from war sometimes experienced PTSD. Even though I was aware of that, I couldn't quite grasp the mechanics of it. But now I understand it better. There is something so horrific about death -- so exceedingly heavy for our minds to bear -- that our mind is programmed against becoming comfortable with death.
With a loss like this, you come to understand the meaning behind a well-worn phrase like "the sanctity of life." Life is precious. After going through this, I have a whole new perspective on a myriad of issues related to life: murder, war, grave illness, etc. With this nightmare, I think that my subconscious was trying to cope with or process through the horror & trauma of that experience somehow.
I don't know if I'll have more dreams that include Mom in the future. I imagine that I will. But the ones I have had have already helped me recognize so much already. I'm grateful that they've been impressionable enough for me to remember them when I've woken up.
I encourage you to try to pay attention to your own dreams. If they're impressionable enough that you remember them the morning after, write or type them down. Meditate on them. I imagine that there are some thoughts in them that will help you discover more about yourself or about the subject matter your dreams explore.
It's high time I pick up with describing some of the strange dreams I've had recently as I've been mourning the loss of my Mom. If you missed the first part of this series, you can read it here.
A fair warning: there's some real personal stuff in here. If you're uneasy with people getting sort of "emotionally naked," then you might just wanna stop reading now and move on to something else.
It's been awhile since I dreamed this dream. Anyhow, here's a summary from my previous entry about the major events of this dream:
I had this dream where Mom was coming to visit me for a week. She was coming down from Alabama with her mother & her sister. The first day she came, she and I reconnected in affectionate ways that are normal for mothers & their sons (and as was normal for us). I always enjoyed it when Mom scratched my head & played with my hair; so I would oftentimes lean against her shoulder & let her play with my hair. In this dream, Mom & I were doing this on our first day together. I didn't have an awareness of the strangeness of this encounter because of Mom's death; I was simply enjoying the rich, full amount of time we had together after recognizing that we had been apart for some time. The best way to describe this part of the dream was that Mom & I were reconnecting both physically and emotionally.
This was a very comforting experience for me. But what happened next was an emotional jolt of another kind.
Within the dream, the very next day, Mom surprised me with the news that she, her sister, and her mother were going to cut their visit with me short & head up to Atlanta, GA for some shopping. They had to go abruptly, seemingly after having planned to spend time with me for a week.
My immediate reaction? First shock (What?! Why? Why NOW?), and then anger. But it wasn't an enraged anger; it was a calm, thoughtful anger, if such a thing exists.
Before I describe what happened next, I have to provide some context. My Mom left our family in the middle of my Senior year in high school. She met another man who flattered her. She didn't have any improper relations with him while still with my Dad. But she felt that her relationship with Dad had grown cold, and she was eager to experience the warmth of love again.
This is going to sound odd -- because it was -- but Mom actually consulted me on her decision to leave us & move away to Alabama. I specifically remember how in early December 1998 Mom told me that she had rekindled a friendship with an old pal, she didn't know if it would ever become anything more, but that she felt trapped & wanted to be set free to pursue a better relationship with him or whoever else might come along. She asked me what I thought about that. So, I told her that I thought that was her choice. I calmly, rationally told her that I wanted her to stay with Dad, but I understood how she felt & appreciated her desire to be happy. I explained that I thought her decision wouldn't much affect me, because I would in just 9 months time be moving away for college. But I urged her to consider my sister, who was just entering adolescence.
Mom made the decision to go pretty quickly after that conversation. The month between that conversation & the day she left was one of the dreariest, depressing periods of my life. I kind of chuckle about it now, but I literally sat in my room and listened to Simon & Garfunkel that whole month. That's how sad *I* was! ;)
I didn't think Mom's leaving our family would affect me that much, but it did. I don't think I ever really expressed it to Mom, either, because part of her decision to leave was based on me saying, "I think I'll be alright."
So back to the dream. Mom has up & decided she's going to cut her visit (and MY time) short to go off on some flighty, selfish shopping journey. And so I tried to rationally explain to Mom why I didn't appreciate it. I started to explain how she wasn't considering me, and how this was hurting my feelings. I remember saying repetitively, "Mom... ... You KNOW why I'm upset about this." With this line of conversation, I was connecting her cutting her visit short with her leaving the family a decade ago. I was turning the screws to try to get her to stay. And she'd act dumb, and I'd interrupt saying, "MOM -- I know you KNOW why I'm upset."
And that was it. That's when I woke up. So comforting, and yet so disturbing.
For the first time, I think, I've realized how much Mom's departure from my family actually did affect me. Like the stereotypical "hero child," I wanted to pretend that I was above mere feelings -- that I was an impregnable fortress that couldn't be touched by pain or hurt. And yet I was still feeling it all. And here I am NOW -- almost TEN years later -- STILL feeling it because I never really dealt with it.
You wanna know what song I listened to most during that dreadful "Simon & Garfunkel" period? It's called "I Am a Rock." Until just a few weeks ago, right after I dreamed this dream, I hadn't realized how much this song conditioned my response to those events in my life until I randomly heard this song on the radio -- the first time I'd given it a listen almost TEN years.
The first & last lines are so revealing...
"A winter's day In a deep & dark December I am alone..."
"...And a rock feels no pain And an island never cries."
Dreams can shake us up because sometimes they make us deal with emotional issues that we've tried to sweep under the rug. For me, my response to the intense emotional turmoil in my life at that time was to retreat into myself & shut others out of my life. To this day, my personality still resonates with figures & characters who can be strong, self-reliant people without the need of supporting friends or family.
Listen to something I wrote but never published on the blog when I was trying to clear my mind about an infatuation with a particular girl a couple of years ago. I was pontificating about my own romance with being like a cowboy:
Cowboys don't need girls -- it's just them, their horse, & the frontier. It's what I love about the movie "Jeremiah Johnson."
And yet still he learned to settle down with his wife & adopted boy.
[Sigh]
So part of me likes the independence of singleness. The cowboy-esque "I'm satisfied on my own" attitude that doesn't need anyone else.
You know, it didn't take long for God to figure out in Scripture that "it is not good for man to be alone." We were not created to be Christian Cowboys wild & roaming the frontier all by ourselves. I wasn't created for that. I, and we all, were created for community.
I suppose I'm writing this for the benefit of my friends, or for anyone who might stumble across this while doing a Google Search. In life, there are going to be unique times where we face intense grief or disappointment. It's not a matter of if, but when. When you do, I encourage you to do the courageous thing and face your grief or disappointment head-on. You will not be able to put it off forever. Someday your feelings will find you; perhaps long after it's too late to deal with the person who helped produce those feelings.
Ever had a dream that felt like more than a dream?
I feel like I'm taking a chance writing this in public. For one thing, any narrative that one seeks to describe out of a dream always makes you sound kooky. But also, some of the assumptions I make about dreams in general based on this dream might make me sound like a wacko to you. I guess I should just start by describing the dream.
It's been a couple of weeks now, but I had this dream where Mom was coming to visit me for a week. She was coming down from Alabama with her mother & her sister. The first day she came, she and I reconnected in affectionate ways that are normal for mothers & their sons (and as was normal for us). I always enjoyed it when Mom scratched my head & played with my hair; so I would oftentimes lean against her shoulder & let her play with my hair. In this dream, Mom & I were doing this on our first day together. I didn't have an awareness of the strangeness of this encounter because of Mom's death; I was simply enjoying the rich, full amount of time we had together after recognizing that we had been apart for some time. The best way to describe this part of the dream was that Mom & I were reconnecting both physically and emotionally.
I'll get more into this next part of the dream in another upcoming entry, but the very next day Mom surprised me with the news that she, her sister, and her mother were going to cut their trip short. They had to go abruptly, seemingly after having planned to spend time with me for a week. I was upset, we had a conversation about it, and then all of a sudden I woke up.
When I woke up, I remembered every detail of this dream. In fact, the dream stayed with me & sort of dominated my thoughts the whole day.
I'm not a dreams expert. I haven't read a whole lot about dreams. But my Mom (who had a Masters in Social Work) did, and she passed a lot of what she knew on to me. I recognize that a lot of what happens in dreams is the subconscious element of the mind working out & dealing with matters that haven't been resolved consciously. And, really, it seems that there is a whole lot more that we do NOT know about dreams than what we do know. With that in mind, I wonder if it is possible that what I dreamed was in some way Mom, in the spirit realm, reaching out to comfort me.
I know that sounds nutty. I usually don't believe in that kind of stuff. In fact, if it weren't so insensitive to do so, I'd probably often burst people's bubbles when they voice stuff like that. But what if it's possible? We have stories in Scripture where God seems to use dreams from time to time, from Jacob's ladder to Paul's Man of Macedonia. What if it's possible that God let Mom interact with me in my subconscious-controlled state? What if he let us have a moment together because I miss her & she missed me? Just because the experience was so rich and there were so many parts that felt so real, I almost think that that is what happened.
Even if it that's not what happened, I was comforted. There are a couple other elements of these dreams that have been anything but comforting, though. I'll be addressing those soon.
On Sunday night & early Monday morning, I dreamed of Nick Saban. I thought you all might enjoy laughing at me. The following are posts from an internet forum on BamaOnLine.
Enjoy :)
My name is feetwasher, and I have a man-crush on Nick Saban. Last night, he was in my dreams.
He's So Dreamy (G)
I dreamed that I went over to his house with a buddy of mine. I was in awe of his place as soon as I walked in the door. We went through several rooms before we were shown by his wife into his den. He was reclining there while watching tape of a recent Iron Bowl game. We started a little shop talk, and it wasn't long before I said something that got him riled up (I don't know what it was). I tried to stand my ground with him intellectually. Finally, at an impasse, he realized that there was only one way for us to settle this. So we went to another room, he turned on the Xbox 360, and handed me a controller.
Strangely, neither of us chose Alabama as the team we would play with. One of us was Jax St., and the other was San Jose St. On the first play from scrimmage, I ran that QB handoff/keeper-option out of the 4-wide spread formation. It went 65 yards or so for a touchdown. All of a sudden the dream went into another direction... I don't remember anything else about the game.
The other thing I remember about the dream was that there was this pesky black bear that kept coming & terrorizing us at the house. We began spending some time in the back yard, and I had a scoped rifle. Every once in a while, that bear would begin to creep toward the house & I would take some shots at him. Never really delivering a death blow, he would retreat for a while. This continued off & on...
Alright, that's what I remember. I'm on your couch. What say you about me?
(Posted by: bamaman18)
You like Saban and the direction of the program under his leadership. But... you are concerned, subconsciously, that Saban might leave Alabama, and what this will do to your faith in the program if that happens. The Bear represents the NCAA and your ongoing concern that we will be slapped with sanctions again, and this time it could be worse. As bad as you want them to go away, they never seem to totally leave.
I'll send you my invoice...........
Posted on 1/21 10:12 AM | IP: Logged
(Posted by: 86bamagrad)
There will be seven years of bumper crops, followed by seven years of famine...wait, that was a different dream.
Posted on 1/21 10:21 AM | IP: Logged
(Posted by: ME)
bamaman18, I posted this partly out of jest & partly out of genuine interest. I just did a Yahoo! search on bears in dreams, but the information provided there did little to help me understand what that portion of my dream means. I'm curious about what that could be. Perhaps it is representative of something external related to the Alabama football program -- the NCAA, the mainstream media, or Bear Bryant. Or perhaps it could be represntative of something internal -- personal anxiety, fear, or even a season of healing (e.g. I'm fighting to keep a terrorizing force at bay in my personal life...). Don't suppose I want to get too personal on a public internet forum. Anyway, any insight you have to share would be welcomed.
(Posted by: TheHit86)
[...] I think you have special "man feelings" about Saban but you still think no man is your intellectual superior. However, you cannot in good conscience claim to be more intelligent than your "man crush" so you basically come out of the dream calling it a draw.
Currently Reading: Mere Christianity Written By: Clive Staples Lewis
Pretty good so far. He has a pretty good pulse on human nature, which is what he opens with. Also, I'm pretty excited that this book has a World War II slant, as this book was originally a series of radio addresses that C.S. Lewis made during the war. I will comment when something makes me have to think out loud.
Won't be blogging this weekend. Going with my Dad up to Birmingham, AL for a weekend of RVing & golf. No WiFi where we're going, which is mostly a good thing for me I think.
Had a strange dream that has lingered with me quite a while today. I don't remember most of the dream, but I remember the part right up to where I woke up. I was sitting in a seat in an auditorium with a group of guys, and all of a sudden some prison guards come in to clap us in irons and lead us away to be processed in a prison. It was the kind of cuffs that it goes around your neck, and then a string of metal dangles down & connects to hand cuffs. Not sure whether or not there were ankle cuffs -- don't remember. But then I was following somebody out into a courtyard in chains, and there was a point where the four people I was following had to stop. They found a 4-seat table to sit at, and I had to stand there behind them. They looked up at me smiling, and then I looked up and around and there were other inmates in jumpsuits sitting at 4-person tables, and I was the only one standing. I remember thinking, "I don't know what I did to get in here, but I deserve what I got." And, "I'm not sure how long I'll be here, but it's at least going to be for 5 or 6 months."
Strange dream. And I'm one of those who believes that dreams have something to do with one's subconscious. So I'm thinking it means that I'm feeling guilty enough about something that I need to be punished, or that I'm feeling trapped or hemmed in by something in life. So these thoughts have been haunting me today.
From stabbing my grandfather & poisoning my grandmother (both of whom are already deceased) in a dream a couple months ago, to this, I have some FREAKY dreams, huh?
Having some mellow time this afternoon. Instead of watching talking heads debate sports topics, I've listened to a little Bebo & am currently listening to my Pandora station. Calming me down some.
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