Ironic....

One of the great ironies of my life is that God chooses to speak to me quite regularly in dreams.

You see, for all those years that I was depressed, I also suffered regularly from quite severe nightmares. Nightmares are something I’ve fought since I was a child, but as the depression intensified, the severity of the dreams also increased. I would wake unable to move, and wonder why my bed was shaking. As I would come more fully awake, I would realize that the bed was shaking because my entire body was trembling violently from the aftermath of the dream. It would feel as if something was quite literally sitting on my chest, pinning me to the bed. My pajamas would be soaked with sweat, and at times it would take all of my strength to remind myself that it had been a dream. There were many times where I wanted to scream, move, run, anything, but it took all of the strength I could summon to simply whisper over and over, “Jesus.”

Nightmares seemed to alternate with periods of insomnia, or wakefulness, and for nearly three years I rarely slept more than four hours in a stretch. All told, most nights I probably slept an average of 6 hours, and probably woke up at least 2-3 times a night, either from a nightmare, or just because I could not manage to sleep deeply and peacefully.

When God chose to heal the depression, one of the things that marked the evening was that I slept six hours in a row, without waking, and without nightmares.

I sort of assumed that my sleep difficulties had come to an end. With the healing of the depression, I intended to pursue a life of restful sleeps, and gratefulness to God for letting me sleep.

I’d had a friend who loved when God spoke to her in her dreams. When He was silent in her sleep for too long, her prayer request would be that He would once again give her dreams. I was more than happy to pray that over her, but I couldn’t help poking good natured fun at the same time. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting their sleep interrupted, even by God.

And now, it seems to be one of God’s favorite tactics to speak in my dreams. Which is great, I guess. I mean, I’m glad He’s speaking to me, but I really, really did want to sleep.

And when He does it every night for a stretch of time, I tend to get a little annoyed. I was telling my coworker the other day that I’d been having dreams again lately, and she commented, “That’s great. The Lord is speaking to you!” My response? “Well, I wish He’d choose some other time than 5 am!”

Also, dreams are so metaphorical. Sometimes I wonder if this God who insists on speaking just likes to taunt me a little. I’ve always hated metaphor, been a straightforward kind of girl. I write poetry less than once a year, preferring the more concrete style of the personal essay. I hated studying poetry in school, and I majored in history, rather than English to avoid having to pick apart metaphors and symbols for the rest of my life.

And what does God do, choose to speak to me in highly metaphorical, symbolic language!

Like I said at the beginning, one of the great ironies of my life is that the method that God has chosen for speaking to me is in dreams.