My mind is trying to tell me something...

if only I could figure out what?

I must have been even *more* tired than I thought after my busy week. Still a little bit groggy, I just woke up from a longer nap than I meant to take. I was catching up some on my own devotional time, trying something that our pastor suggested this morning. (We're doing a 52 week series on Jesus, and he suggested we read only the 'red letter words', the words of Christ, and let God speak to us in our own situation - not completely ignoring the context but just setting it aside temporarily, to see if we gained new insights.)

Anyway, as I was finishing up I got sleepy and put my head down for a short nap - and slept for 2 hours - and dreamed like crazy, as though I'd been REM sleep deprived for a week. I've been having these recurring theme dreams yet again. Seems like whenever I have a major life change or am trying to process something big in my personal life I have dreams of a recurring nature. Shortly after giving birth to my oldest son, I had a lot of dreams about earthquakes. Yes, I was feeling a bit buried under my circumstances and my personal ground was a little unstable (we had just moved to northern VA, I had just had my first child, and I was home all day with our little one and knew almost no one.)

So this has happened all my life, and usually if I sit and puzzle a while, these dreams give me insight to whatever I'm going through. The Bible puts great stock in dreams. Joseph had a doozy that set off the chain of events which eventually placed him 2nd in command to Pharoah over Egypt. Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzer's dream and was appointed ruler of Babylon.
From ancient times people have believed that dreams were important - a gift from God (or the gods, in polytheistic cultures). As a part- psychology major in college I also believe that if we look at our dreams we can gain insight into the subconscious - to see what our brains having *really* been chewing on while we've gone about our daily life.

And I am utterly stumped over this one - this "series" of dreams. This set has two main themes. Always I find myself either wandering around lost in a large series of rooms - a huge shopping mall, a city, a train station, a convention center - doesn't matter what, it's always large and confusing. And there's always a handicap of sorts - an elevator that moves like the one in Willy Wonka's that I don't understand how to use, a train I can't seem to catch, escalators that end in weird places, or something that is chasing me while I'm trying to get unlost.

Today's dream featured me lost in a gigantic mall/convention center complex in (evidently) some foreign country, trying to find my way around and the people only spoke Spanish (which I speak only a little of, pretty poorly these days cause I'm out of practice).

So.... you say, why should I care? Aren't dreams just the brain's way of organizing bits of information and filing them in their proper place in the mental files? Well, yes..... and no. I'm one of those folks who dream vivid technicolor dreams (and nightmares, erk) which I usually remember later. And after studying my own dreams over the years I've learned to tell the difference between regular old brain organizing ones (always very choppy, many "scene" changes, make no sense, etc.) and the ones that could be trying to tell me something (recurring theme, or have a very clear "storyline" from beginning to end, that I remember in great detail later).

OK, again.... WHY SHOULD I CARE? Because I've been praying about a really frustrating, knotty problem that has no solution right now. (Actually several related problems that are all tangled up together.) And when I'm in this frame of mind, I'll take all the help I can get. I firmly believe God can help and guide us through our dreams, especially if we run to Him for the insight, rather than to secular resources. (Ahem, I am human, I have in the past resorted to those, and repented of it - only God usually gets His "I told you so" in because their interpretations never really "fit".)

I will be the first to admit I have a patience problem when it comes to waiting on the Lord (stop laughing D!). It's so hard, though, when I feel like the answer is thisclose and I can't.... quite..... reach it!

Sigh.... guess I'll be doing more lost wandering in my dreams for a while.... maybe I could put in a request to visit a Welsh castle....