Do you dream? I haven't lately, but last night I did. Before I woke up this morning, I had a long, detailed dream. It was of many things. To set the stage, I was somewhere
different. I’m not sure where,
definitely not in Memphis, but somewhere far, far away, where things were very,
very different. Painful.
·
Katie and I had gone to this theme park. The theme for this park was a third-world
country. We stepped into a shop, and
while Katie sat down to rest her feet, I went into a back wing of the shop, and
heard the doors lock behind me. It was
me and few other guests inside, and I panicked.
I looked through the cracks and could see Katie, and began banging on
the door and calling her name. She
looked over, confused, and rushed over to help me. We cursed the storekeeper and left. From there we ran into a group of our
friends, and decided to have lunch somewhere.
Katie walked away to meet the friends who were already at the
restaurant, leaving Patrick and I behind.
He and I didn’t really know where the restaurant was, but we knew we
would have to the cross the center of town and to get to the less-crazy side of the park where everyone was meeting. But in order to cross, you
had to pass through a gladiator, whose job was to keep you in town. And I remember thinking, “If this is what a
third-world country is like, I don’t ever want to go, because I don’t even know
if I can get out of here alive!”
·
I had a friend who was going through a difficult
situation. Every time I tried to reach
out to her, she talked over me to someone else.
I was so discouraged. And one day
she and I met, and she began to tell me of her troubles and started crying, and I
began to say something, and as I did, someone else came through the door and she
sobbed to them, ignoring me. As they
spoke, I walked away, angry and sad, and even sadder, because she didn’t even
care enough to notice me leaving her. I
was invisible.
·
I was feeling sick and something was wrong. I was still in a different town, so I went to
a doctor. The doctor and nurse were
before me. And the young nurse began to
tell me what was wrong, and the doctor hushed her, basically telling her not to
tell me because he wanted to send me to a specialist so he could get more money
for referring me. With a smile and a
nod, he gave me the name of a doctor, implicating it was a serious situation,
and walked away. The girl looked at me
sad, and knew what he was doing was wrong.
She whispered to me what I had and what would easily fix it, but I
couldn’t hear her! Her whisper was too
low! And I didn’t want to ask her again
for fear the doctor would hear her and fire her. She began to walk away, and sang something
about it being great when the “Holy Spirit moves in you.” She placed her hand on a mood plaque on the
wall, showing her risen pulse. She felt
like she had honored God, but I felt sad that I had let her walk away.
·
I was sitting in a writing class, being taught
by Kirk Cameron. I had a sense that he
knew something was not right with this world we were in. He was monotone and almost sad, but still
passionate about writing. Instead of
taking notes, I watched his eyes, his movements, observing through his body
language both his sadness for the world, but the hope that still remained. I didn’t take any notes, even though I was
excited about the class and enamored with Kirk, and instead I had a Connect Four sitting in front of me. When he finished, he rose and walked out of
the small room, not saying goodbye, but merely wandering away.
·
I met a professor in the hall, and talked to him
for a moment about Kirk. When he talked,
he, too, was sad, and said that the world we were living in was an evil
place. Horrible things happen. And he turned to the window and looked out. A
specific event was taking place even as we spoke. I could see down from our tall building and
my heart broke. A beautiful girl, who had
been friends with many of the people in the circle now surrounding her, hung
from a chain link around her neck. She was positioned outside the cage, clinging to stay attached as it moved upward. It was here she would die. Either she would lose her grip and plummet to
the earth, the chain hanging her, or as the cage moved upward, it would smash
her against the ceiling. As the cage
drew near, a tall man, who I could tell had once been close with her, started
to reach out, but his words were angry. He spat, and punched her in the face, calling
her a bitch. He was antagonizing her,
trying to make her lose her grip. She
struggled to the very moment she died.
As the ceiling drew near, I covered my ears and began to cry. But even then I could her the pop of bones
and her scream. And then I heard one
more pop, and it was over.
And then I woke up, hurting for this girl I had never met
and who surely doesn’t exist…but existed for a moment in time in my dreams. I relived everything I had experienced in the dream, and thanked God that it wasn't real...
