Hopeful Dreams

As I write this, it is 5:37 on Tuesday morning. I just had a dream that was so hopeful and brought up so many excited thoughts that now I have to write it down before I will be able to sleep again. I've never been much for journaling, I've realized of late it's because I have to write TO someone. Somehow things don't feel real until I can give it away and have it received.

But first some background on the pictures in the dream-I know that some of the images came from real life. There is a new cookie store that just opened at the local mall, and I really like their cookies. On weekends they sometimes have a girl walking around giving free samples,and my sisters and I had just been there. I ventured off to try to find her (the cookie chick), and when I rejoined my sisters they were eating samples and said I had just missed her. So off I went again on a hunt around the mall for those elusive little nuggets. Also, every day after mass I've been trying to say a quick prayer at the feet of the statue of Mary and Joseph- asking them to be both spouse and parent to me in this time.

Now the dream. In my dream, I was feeling so sorry for myself. Woe is me; I had to bake 5 dozen cookies! Although I liked doing it, the solitude was making it a drudgery. And there was just so much DOUGH everywhere; bowls and bowls of the stuff! To top it all off, my parents (I knew it was my parents, though I never saw their faces) came home from having gone out to dinner with MY friends and were being very evasive about where they'd been. That just made me feel even sorrier for myself- here baking cookies while my parents and friends were out enjoying themselves without me. I asked them where they'd been and saw them giving each other looks, like "don't tell her yet" or "she's not ready to know". Well, that just really sent me over the edge and I started pouting for all I was worth. But I couldn't dampen their good spirits, and the more I groused the more they smiled. Finally they decided to reveal the truth. My friends were having a baby, and they wanted my parents to raise it! They said they had chosen my parents because they knew that a child raised by my parents would be smothered in love by a whole family. I was ashamed at myself for my own childish behavior, but my shame was drowned by my joy- we were going to have a baby! It's all rather strange when I put it out into words like this- I know nothing can convey the excitement I felt.


But even as I awoke, the message in the dream was clear: in the end when all is revealed, it is only the lack of trust that you will regret.

(Psalm 127:2 In vain are your earlier risings, your going later to bed, eating the bread of anxiety; for he pours out blessings on his beloved while thry sleep...)

This whole dream was even more significant as a few days ago a friend sent me an excited letter; she had a dream that filled her with so much hope that she felt it had to be from God. I won't go into the details of her dream, but she was sure her dream meant that we were entering a beautiful new place in our lives, despite our present doubts and fears. Her own life situation, though differing in plot from mine is still very parallel; we are both worried about what the future holds and struggle with anxiety that we may have somehow been "forgotten".

So now I can click post, and send my hope out into the void...