I had a dream last night that compelled me to restart the blog thing.
Normally my dreams don’t make sense at all. Random people doing things that make no sense and have no connections to the actual outcome (mowing the yard so chocolate ice cream will come in the mail)… but this one stuck with me on the way to work this morning, and that was kind of a big deal.
Last night was the first time I dreamed about Jesus.
I have been overwhelmed lately to say the least. I had surgery, I started school, I left a job, I took on more responsibility at work, I had at least one crisis of faith. I’ve been fortunate to get enough sleep to function from one day to the next and dreaming at all is unusual.
It felt like a movie in that I had no control over what was going on in it — I was an onlooker on site with the actors but out of the cameras’ way. The details flew away in the morning, as dreams usually do, but two very intense scenes still haunt my memory.
The first scene is somewhere in the mountains. I can’t see what’s going on, but I hear voices and crying. The sadness is palpable. Something very bad is happening here and nothing can be done to stop it. But for some reason, I know how the story will end (I don’t think I’ve seen this movie before) and the sadness a passing necessity. It won’t stay. But to experience it that deeply, to hear the moans and the cries of people in anguish… Heartbreak. Absolute heartbreak.
In the second scene, I’m in a house…that happens to have very narrow hallways and doesn’t seem finished. The walls are up, the floors are there, but there is no paint, no furniture, just a shell of a home. A few people are there with me. One or two of them are either my age or my height but not both and female, and the man in the house — Jesus — is dressed in white. We’re in the laundry room, which is more of a closet in the middle of a hallway than anything, and someone hands me a hammer and tells me it’s my gift from Jesus. “What do I do with this?” I asked, then went shimmying down the narrow hallways trying to find something I was supposed to hammer. I came back to the laundry room and found a mirror about the size of my hand on the washer.
Lately I’ve felt like I’m guilty of focusing on me. I’m trying to shift the focus. Instead of how much money I make, how can I use what I do to help others grow or heal? How can I use a little spare time or money to make things easier for someone in need? How can I better use my time spent daydreaming to study, read, pray? Share my faith with what I say? Talk about what’s happening with other people rather than telling them about what happened to me?
It’s not about me.
In the first part of the movie, I believe I was following Jesus as He carried the cross. I remember everything clicked in my mind when that occurred to me, and the overwhelming sadness grew even deeper. I remember seeing His face.
In the laundry room, He gave me a hammer.
To break the mirror.
Heart Shaped Stone 