Trees, twirling skirts, mental health and dreams

I've been dreaming about trees nearly every night this week. Not trees of the leafy variety, full, blooming with life, but old and twisted trees, beautiful in their own, stately sort of way. Rugged, black and white sort of images - very Ansel Adams'esque. Trees that have faced the varied elements and challenges thrown at them by nature and still found a way to stand. I don't know what the dreams mean, why these images have reappeared over and over, but there is a deep beauty, peace and strength in the images. I'm putting a picture that I found on a google search in here, to give you a sort of idea of what I've been seeing every night as I sleep.



I'm thinking a lot this week about freedom. About really stepping out into that. Every time I talk with Jesus about freedom in my life lately, I begin to see the same picture. I am alone in a field, a sunlit, beautiful place. I am wearing a twirling skirt and dancing freely, spinning around and around and around in sheer joy. As I go through my week I find myself unconsciously looking for fields, wanting to spin, to dance, to step into that freedom. When I shop these days, I'm keeping my eyes open for a very feminine, bohemian sort of twirling skirt, for that coming moment of freedom.

I had a conversation with my mom tonight, and I'm thinking again about homelessness and mental health issues. It would seem that one of my uncles has again been arrested (this time for trespassing in a public place - sleeping in a bathroom), and instead of jail, they've committed him to a mental health facility for a length of time. He's bipolar, and had gone off his meds before this current episode. You kind of have to have all of the background, but my mom's family is full of weird dynamics and unstable people. You think rather differently about homelessness when one of your family members is living on the streets of some major US cities. You tend to think differently about mental illness when you've visited a family member in a mental health facility, because it was their last resort.

Those are the things on my mind tonight. Dreams, twisted trees full of strength and beauty. Freedom and twirling skirts. Mental health and homelessness.

(images are from here and here).