Friday, October 10

Thoughts on Dreaming

Dreams are prevalent in my mind.

In sleep I dream of dancing in strange colors, walking down long corridors and having short romances- sometimes with my husband, sometimes a man from the past and other times with the cute Irish guy from TV. Sometimes the only character I observe is myself and other times my family, friends, and anonymous- yet familiar faces- interact with me. Most often my dreams move from a color to a scene to an ending. No real episodic movement. Once in a while I experience fear in my dream or my dream feels so real that I wake up to reality with a ting of unbelief. Only after the wave of sleep subsides and my bladder is beckoned to a porcelain throne do I understand that I'm awake in Seattle, work and the day to day.

At work I dream. Some of my dreams are imposed, creative attempts at bettering the system for customer service. I like these moments. I am paid to brainstorm and dream about the possibility of something new and how it will affect all aspects of the company. These moments allow my thoughts to move from data entry and customer complaints to the ideal. What would the day be like when everything we do was easily accessible by the computer? What if we actually sold what we could make and everything we made was the best in the business? But those dreams don't last either. I realize that no matter how hard I brainstorm a training problem, a system problem, a simple it-won't-work-with-us-problem will arise and my dreams will either be put on hold, restructured or thrown out all together.

Perhaps because I'm a visual person or maybe because I have a vivid imagination I dream about me. Wondering and speculating, hoping and praying about where I am going to be tomorrow and the next day and wow someday this and someday that. I have dreams to own my own house, perfectly decorated. Dreams to have well behaved, intelligent, super funny, talented children. I dream that someday somewhere I can purchase a warehouse and restore it and open it up so that artists all over the city can use the rooms, cheap so they can make things and create and be loved in this way. I have dreams that Matt will be a successful sales guy, or audio engineer or poet or spoken word artist. I dream that I'll be a perfect beautiful wife that is patient, kind, long suffering and completely sold out for Jesus. But those dreams just seem so far away.

Dreaming seems like a cousin to hope. Maybe I am an avid dreamer because I have hope. I believe Christ is real, possibilities are real and even if they are far away I can still think about them. On the other hand I think that dreams often deceive me. Life as Matt would say, never turns out the way we expect. Sometimes our dreams will happen at a different time, later than we had expected. My dreams that involve other people often need re-working and restructuring. As for my dreams at night, unless it’s the warm milk I drank before bed, I’m pretty sure I didn’t chose to have them- they came to me (I do love my husband not the guy from the past, and the Irish guy on TV is probably a jerk in real life).

For me when I dream I must grapple with the desire for control and perfection, self-centeredness and the reality- this world is fallen and I am part of that world. So my desire when I dreams is to counteract them with the truth. Even if I have to wait for years, or other people don’t like my dreams, I still have hope. Dreams are mine but my hope is in Christ.

Thank you father for offering hope to my poor weary soul. And thank you father for the power of imagination.

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