Recently, I had two very perplexing dreams that caused me to pause and ponder the nature of dreams and what we can really gain from them.
I know that dreams are (thought to be) outlets through which our brains process information that is daily crammed into our minds. Each tiny detail of every day is recorded, and sleep is a time to file away in an organized manner the memories and cues that have been acquired during our daily rituals and experiences. Sometimes, though, I think we can learn an abundance from the dreams that are a result of the filing system that God designed for each of our unique brains. Our dreams are a way for our brains to get our attention, to take a situation and put it in terms that grab our attention and spell out what is really going on when perhaps we don't want to admit it.
For example, over the course of two nights in the past week, I had two very strange dreams that separately make entirely no sense. In the first, I was outdoors with my family when I startled a snake who had coiled up with a garden hose in the yard. The snake then proceeded to chase me and bite me. When I tried to get help at the local hospital, I was simply handed a stack of paperwork and told that they'd get to me eventually.
The second dream was more bizarre: I was working in a show with a group of blue aliens (yes, I blame Avatar for this). Suddenly, my father (not my actual dad; I seriously felt like I was in a movie) grabs me up and we start running for our lives. I figure out as the dream unfolds that apparently my father in the dream is an alien who had learned to morph into human form, thereby making me half alien. That did not make the traditional aliens very happy. I could never tell if they wanted to kill me or study me, but either way, I did not think it would be a great experience.
After that second dream, I began to wonder if consuming sugar right before bedtime was the culprit of the strangeness of my dreams (but that's a different story). I couldn't get the imagery out of my head, and finally a commonality in the two dreams presented itself to me. In both, I was running from something of which I am deathly afraid (yes, I am afraid of aliens. As a child, I was terrified of ET. True story).
I started trying to apply that to the actual events of my life and realized that, once again, my subconscience was right. For the past month, I have been so afraid of what the future holds for me: finishing undergrad in only three more semesters, grad school possibilities, career possibilities, where to go, who to see, friends to gain and lose, just an overall anxiety about what was going to happen.
I'm not always an anxious person, but every once in a while I do freak out. It's like that feeling I get when I'm floating; I'm calm and enjoying the water, then suddenly every nerve in my body jumps to attention because relying on water for stability just doesn't make sense. I literally lose the ability to float simply because my body doesn't trust the water.
In life, it's basically the same thing with God. I need to rely totally on His plan for my life, but occasionally I start to overthink things and realize that there are way too many blank holes in the plan for it to be feasibly trusted. Every neuron fires in revolt of following such an incomplete plan and I have a viable mutiny between my brain and my faith. (Sometimes being an intellectual really has its downfalls. Childlike faith becomes a true task to achieve.)
In times like that I have to literally just stop and listen to God call to me as He did to Israel in Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God."
I've been reading lately about God's promise to us and how we are children of promise and not children of the law (see Galatians for Paul's explanation on the thought). Though Paul was talking about the Hebrew law, I began to reflect on how that writing applies to us today. We as Christians no longer have Pharisees nagging at us to eat only clean animals or wear only certain fabrics as prescribed in Mosaic law, but we do have a world that is telling us how to be politically correct and how we should be unoffensive to everyone, even when we stand blatantly against them (which is also taboo, by the way). They even tell us that we have to have a plan for our lives, that we need to know what we're doing long before we do it. And oftentimes, if that plan doesn't include the pursuit of riches or success, they will tell you you're stupid and you'll never amount to anything.
In the reality of God's plan for my life, though, I only know what I'm doing right now. I am a student. I am studying psychology, Spanish and TESOL, and as long as God has me on this path, I will give each of my classes all that I have. I don't know why God has me on so many seemingly different paths, but one of these days, I'll reach a crossroads where all of them meet and it will (hopefully) all make sense.
I am a friend, a daughter and a sister. Some things will never change. God gave me my family as a means of support, but sometimes their roles in my life will change. I guess we both have to learn how to cope with that one. As for my friends, some of them I just intuitively know will always be there, even if I don't hear from them as often as I'd like.
I'm an employee. As much as I don't understand why God has me working at Walgreens, He has yet to release me from it, so I'm just assuming there's a reason for me to be where I am.
In everything, though, God knows my every need, and He will provide like He always has.
Yes, it is very disconcerting to me to think that I am not really sure in what state or even what country I will be in a year and a half from now. But I know that God has the plan, and He can see the road beyond the bumps of this semester and beyond the curve of graduation next year. He knows me better than I know myself, and I need to trust Him, no matter what the laws and the physical situation around me are saying.
It's kind of like floating. It scares me to rely on something so seemingly unstable for total support. But you have to learn to float before you can swim. It doesn't make sense and sometimes I don't think I'm capable of doing it, but the more I trust, the more I find that all things are indeed possible.
In the meantime, I'll keep living one day at a time and dreaming of the plans that God has for me. And hopefully, there will be no more snakes or strange alien life forms.
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