Tag Archives: Dancing in My Dreams

Dream Diary

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Shh . . . I’m dreaming

I have had lots of God-given dreams, and other dreams of personal significance.  From the titles of two of my books—half of what I’ve written! (Laughing in My Dreams and Dancing in My Dreams)—it’s obvious that dreams and dreaming has played a part in my life.  And dreams are one way that God speaks to us:

For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword (Job 33:14-18).

But of course, not every dream is a God dream.  Those other dreams can be useful in helping you to understand how you’re feeling about certain things in your life.  For example, when I was a new mother being woken every two hours to nurse my baby, I had a dream that I was trying to vacuum the house and I had half a dozen little kids hanging onto my legs and pulling on my shirt.  I was feeling overwhelmed, and the dream helped me to understand that so that I could look for help to do all the things I needed to do.

Have you ever had an interesting dream, and you wanted to remember and understand the dream, but it faded away too quickly?  Of course, that happens to all of us.  You’re too sleepy to get up and search for a pen and paper, and then if you do, the dream is mostly gone (if not altogether forgotten) by the time you do.  I believe that we all dream, though many people say that they never dream.  I have heard that if you keep a pen and paper handy, and write your dreams down, you will become better at remembering your dreams.  So I decided to give it a try.

Actually, what I did was get a regular diary, and start recording the daily personal words that God was giving me (which I wrote about in yesterday’s post Devotional Journal).  Since the dates in the diary start about a month before I bought it, I began writing my dreams on those blank pages.  [That’s why the picture of the page (in my recent post Swedish Fish and the Nice Young Man) where I wrote my dream of November 4, says August 23 (in Italian).]

The dream mentioned above was a Rapture dream because it had a nice young man holding the door open for me, and as soon as I woke up, I knew that He was Jesus.  And in the continuation of that dream, we were in a car, going around and picking up all the other people who had sprouted like us.  I’ve had a lot of Rapture dreams lately.  But in looking through my dream diary I was caught by this one:

The Thorn

I only remember that someone had stepped on a thorn and it was very painful.  They were asked to rate the pain on a scale like in the doctor’s office.  I don’t remember the rating, but it was high-end.

I had thought that this dream had to do with the divorce and the possibility of running into my ex or one of his family here in Texas because I had driven through his last known location just that day.  But in light of recent events (see Kicked When I was Down), I think it may have been a prophetic dream, speaking about the events that would happen a week later, when I was passive-aggressively thrown out of Barbara and Leo’s house.  That was very painful, and more so because of the way that they did it.

I don’t want to keep going over and over and over this thing.  But honestly, how do I handle family get-togethers?  I have always believed in forgiving people as quickly as you can, but never allow them the opportunity to hurt you again.  Am I wrong about that?

Well, in today’s devotional, I believe that God is telling me that in this case, I am wrong.  Love demands that we make ourselves vulnerable.  My flesh is screaming NOOOOOOOO!!!!!  But I’ve got to crucify the flesh, take up my cross, and follow Jesus.  Two days ago, the Lord gave me 1 Samuel 7:12-13:

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” So the Philistines were subdued and they stopped invading Israel’s territory. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines.

Then yesterday: “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?  That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity,” (Jonah 4:2).

Then today: “For who is God besides the Lord?  And who is the Rock except our God?” (Psalm 18:31).  I feel like with these three passages the Lord is telling me to forgive, let myself be vulnerable again, and show all those involved what grace really looks like.  And God will be my Rock, my Stone of Help through this.  Oh, God!  It’s hard!  I have never told my side (not to them), and God is telling me not to run away from the pain when all my flesh screams for me to run away and never look back.  But this is a path I’ve got to walk, and I can do it only through the help of my Rock.

God is good!  Even with all of life’s thorns, God is good!

Meeting Missionaries in Texas

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In a few minutes, I will be meeting Nadia and Buck, who I stayed with in Sofia this past winter.  In the meantime, they have moved to Texas.  I will give them this year’s two books, since they figure in four chapters in one book (Dancing in My Dreams), and the entire first part of the other book (more than 50 pages of Graceful Flight) was written at The Promised Land, owned by Nadia’s brother-in-law, Bobby.

It will be interesting to see how they are adapting to life in the US.  They met at seminary here, but since marriage (more than 20 years ago), they have lived in Bulgaria.

–        Later     –

Joe T GarciasJoe T. Garcia’s–a Fort Worth experience!

They were going to pick me up at my hotel, which is close to their apartment, but they went to a different location of the same hotel brand from where I’m staying.  That little snafu was typically American, and sort of indicative of how they’re managing in the US.  Instead, we met at the restaurant that I had suggested: Joe T. Garcia’s.  I discovered Joe T’s before it became the hotspot that it is today.  Back in about 1980, when I was working as a law office runner (messenger girl), a co-worker told me about Joe T. Garcia’s.  Her husband was a cop in Fort Worth, so he got around a lot and knew all the really good places.  In those days, it was a tiny restaurant in a clapboard house in the neighborhood of the Fort Worth Stockyards (not the nicest part of town).  There was no menu, you just ate whatever they were serving, but that was always excellent.  And you had to walk through the kitchen, past the cooks stirring steaming loads of beans in big frying pans, to get to the dining room.  Now they have added on and added on, and have taken over the next couple of blocks for parking, and it went from funky to fancy.  Now Joe T. Garcia’s is very popular, and has photos of celebrities from all over the US who ate there on their visit to Fort Worth.

I can report that their food is still excellent.  On this, my first day back to Texas in over a year, I was suffering from a severe Mexican food deficit.  My fellow Texan agreed that it had been hard, living in Bulgaria without a Mexican food fix.

So over a great meal, we caught up on all the happenings in their lives and mine.  We commiserated about sensory overload at the grocery store and avoiding the mall at all costs.  Nothing good can come from the American culture of consumerism.  It creates a perceived need that develops dissatisfaction in people, whereas, I’ve noticed that I’m happiest when I remember to be grateful.  Plus, they had moved from a really nice apartment in a nice part of Sofia, where they were paying a lot less for a lot more than they are paying here.  They were surprised that Fort Worth is as pricey as it is.

But despite all that, they and their family are getting along fine.  Now all they need is to get that green card so that they can both work.  It will take both salaries to make it in the US.  But God provides for His children, and they have enjoyed some very wonderful and miraculous provision—praise His wonderful Name!  God is good!