Tagged: dreams

Hopes and Dreams for 2018

I’m a little late with my post for the CWBN blog hop this month. I’m pretty good about dashing off a post at the last minute, but I felt such a serious topic deserved a little more reflection than that.
Out of the many hopes I have for the coming year, I’ve narrowed my choices to share in this post to two. I’m having a hard time putting the first one into words without feeling like I am taking myself way too seriously, but this is the truth: I want to grow in holiness. Every day I feel sadness at how far the reality of who I am as a person, a Christian, a Catholic, is from what I know God wants me to be. I’ve made some progress this year, what with Lent, and Confession, and prayer journaling, and my online Catholic groups, and the good Advent I am having, but there’s a lot left to do. And I don’t want to fall into the trap of spending so much time in contemplation that I forget to put my faith into action in the world.
My second hope is more tangible. After six years of renting the house we moved into very abruptly when our prior house burned to the ground, we have decided we are ready to become homeowners again. It’s scary to put down roots again–both literal and figurative–but it finally seems like the right time. There are a few roadblocks though so I ask for my readers’ prayers in successfully navigating them.

Do you have hopes and dreams you’d care to share? Add them in the comments if you wish. And to see what some other Catholic bloggers are dreaming about these days, click the picture below.

FIRE

What Dreams May Come

Last night I dreamt that my family and I were standing outside our house (only, because this was a dream, it wasn’t THIS house, but rather the one I lived in from age 11 until I got married). We heard that scary cracking sound that lets you know that a big tree branch is about to fall and quickly we all ran for cover, and then watched as an entire giant tree fell directly on the house. Instead of knocking a hole where it fell, though, it FLATTENED the entire house like a pancake.
I love analyzing dreams and this one is an interesting mixture of what had happened to me yesterday and deep psychological stuff. William had been begging me to watch the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring with him, and I obliged him last night. When the Nazgul enter Bree, they knock over the gate, flattening the porter. Later, Saruman orders the destruction of Isengard, and enormous trees are soon toppling all over the place. Hence the visual images of the dream.
Lorelei and I were selling cookies at Walgreens yesterday with the Brownie troop leader and her daughter. I mentioned something about our fire, and the little girl had questions, and we talked about it for awhile, especially about all the things we lost. Finally, I’ve been reading a book in which the main character’s loss of her home due to fire is a pretty major plot device.
An aside: You probably won’t have noticed this, but it is pretty damn amazing how often people’s houses burn down in books. It’s also unbelievable, from one who’s been there, how the incident gets glossed over in the rest of whatever book as the romance or whatever made them need to burn down the house in the first place continues. The loss (except if a death occurs, of course) gets talked about for a couple of sentences and then everyone moves on.
Since I’m still dreaming about houses being destroyed, I have obviously not moved on. During our conversation yesterday, Lorelei’s troop leader shared with me that she knows someone who 30 years post fire can’t bear to talk about memorabilia or pictures. It’s just too painful. That’s not me, but I understand.
In last night’s dream, Lorelei and William were concerned about their things being destroyed. I, on the other hand, just kept saying, “Thank God we did not go in the house.” I don’t remember feeling upset about the destruction itself at all. A few months ago I dreamed our house burned down. My mother had to break the news to me and I was like, “Are you serious? Again?” What I remember feeling in that dream was not loss but embarrassment because people would probably be tired of helping us out by now.
I’m still not sure whether my current detachment from/reluctance to acquire material possessions is positive or negative. Maybe both? Anyway, writing about it helps me work it all out, so I hope I’m not boring you yet.

psychology

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

I’ve written before about my anxiety dreams. Last night I had a doozy.
I dreamt that I suddenly realized that I was enrolled in college and that my life had become so complicated that I had simply forgotten all about attending classes for some weeks. I remember thinking that there was no way that I could go back and make up the work I had missed, and that I had no good reason for a late drop, and that I didn’t want all those W’s on my transcript. I was making plans to ask all the professors for incompletes and wondering how I would get all that work done.
Then it got worse. I remembered that I was simultaneously enrolled in high school. I couldn’t recall why this had been necessary, but there was some reason for it. I couldn’t remember having attended any of my classes. I knew I had gotten books and a locker, and I was embarrassed thinking that I was going to have to go to the office and ask where my locker was located and what its combination was, and I was wondering whether I would be able to convince them to forget the whole thing and not mess up my 4.0 average from when I was last there.
I have variations on this dream all the time, and what was particularly evil about last night’s version was that I thought to myself, “This is just like those dreams I always have, only this time it’s real!”
My high school anxiety dream is the most frequent and the worst, but I have another one that’s about Christmas, where I haven’t cooked any food or bought any presents or put up any decorations and it’s the day before Christmas. Then there’s the driving dream, when I’m on some awful interstate that steep and twisty like a roller coaster, and I don’t know where I am or how to get off of it. And there are others.
Anyway, I was SO relieved to wake up this morning. I truly believe that, “It was only a dream,” in one of the most beautiful phrases in the language.
What about you? Do you have any recurring dreams? Do you know what they mean?