Important Dream Revelations

I continued eager to find ways to tell people of the miracle that awaited their permission.  But I was always cognizant of my family’s directive against forcing myself on folks.

Some dreams came during this time to help me see that I wasn’t yet ready to give people the good news that had come to me. Several had to do with teaching. The old inadequacy dreams: I had a teaching job but couldn’t find my room; I was employed at a new school but couldn’t get there on time; I was in my classroom but had not made adequate preparations.

One had me with a friend who has chronic back problems. I touched is back and he took my arm. We tried to help each other up a long flight of stairs to my classroom. I realized I needed a great deal more help that he did.

The most exhausting dream was one in which I was assisting a medical doctor with his patients, listening carefully to their complaints and advising the doctor on what should be done for them. Suddenly I became totally confused, unable to comprehend the patient or remember the complaint of think of a proper remedy. I knew I was in no way ready to help others.

Perhaps one of the most revealing dreams was the one where I was in the sanctuary of my church. Something exciting seemed about to happen. Suddenly I was catapulted out the roof and sat atop one of the walls to observe the festivities below. As I studied that dream the idea came to me that maybe I would not be able to use the church  as a vehicle for spreading the word of my transformation.

I pondered my dreams and wondered what would be my vehicle. Then I found myself thinking of people I knew who were in crisis. I decided rather than call or go to see them, I would write to them a summary of my experience and encourage them to dialogue with their Inner Wisdom. Some called or wrote to thank me for my concern. Some I never heard from. None asked me for more information. I decided at least I had planted a seed.

Haven House Came Calling

That same summer the director of a new residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction came to my church committee with a request. Would we participate with some others in providing an encouraging Sunday message for the residents of his facility? I was delighted with the opportunity.

My family would be satisfied that I had somewhere to tell my story where they would not feel embarrassed. And I would have a monthly opportunity to interact with people who wanted a new beginning. I was eager to see if they would respond positively to my ideas and my story.

And they did. For 32 years they have continued as I have been taking meditations to Haven House and telling my story as well.

My first message was entitled “Good Grief!” (summary follows)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 says “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Job 17:7 says “My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow.”

II Corinthians 7:9-10 says “. . . I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief… For godly grief produced a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. . . .”

Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, wept over his inability to win Jerusalem to the kingdom of God, and grieved over his own impending death. More than anything, the grief of Jesus points to our own basic need to grieve over ourselves. I invite you to consider using this time in your life to do some proper grieving over yourself—some Good Grief.

Grief may be the most important emotion in our lives. It certainly damages us if we do not pay attention to it.  Stages of grief can include anger, guilt, remorse, and feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and despair. Often we get stuck in the guilt. Guilt which produces tapes that keep playing over and over, telling what we did and didn’t do that we are ashamed of.

And the loneliness. And the despair. I urge you to allow yourselves to go beyond the guilt and loneliness to let your grief go even deeper than you have let it go until now. Our natural reaction to negative emotions is to try to ignore them or push them down or run away from them. You have already acknowledged that your response has been to try to escape.

My experience convinces me that the only way we can get through with our grief is to turn and face it—to actually give it permission to let it take whatever expression it chooses to take, whatever form it needs to take to work itself out in us and heal us. A written dialogue with what it eating away at us is what is needed to learn that something deep inside can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Grief is an emotion that cannot be denied if it ever is to disappear. The sadness must be permitted, experienced to the fullest. We must shed all the tears that have been bottled up inside of us in order for all the guilt to be washed away and joy emerge.

Someone has defined laughter as the soul’s most perfect prayer. After our painful, paralyzing time of mourning, authentic laughter will return and with it a special kind of joy. Look at what happened to Jesus as a result of his tears. He was able to raise Lazarus from the dead. In his death the old body died and a new personality was born. Not only the Jerusalem he wept over but people all over the world have followed him as disciples. The same kind of amazing power will happen in our own lives.

I urge you to get on with your grief work.

Why Me?

Marveling at the sheer absurdity that such a miracle could/would happen to me, I began to ask, “Why me? Why has this happened to me?” And immediately and consistently the answer came, always the same.

“Why not you? Why not everyone!? “

I realized that of course the same transformation is intended for everyone. Like the bedraggled Grizabella in “Cats!”, I needed it at the moment perhaps more than anyone I know. I was sure, however, anyone and everyone who needed and wanted what had come to me could have the same thing.

I wanted to shout my story from the rooftops, tell everyone I knew about my miraculous experience. My family accused me of deciding everyone needed an experience like mine. They weren’t far wrong. I became more and more certain that everyone who wanted the freedom and joy that had come to me could have it through a catharsis similar to mine.

With few exceptions, my friends wanted to label the sickness I’d be through a rough virus. Some, when I mentioned miracle, seemed surprised to the point of being fearful, perhaps that I was going to harass them with some born-again story. I wish they had let me.

Several of my closest friends easily recognized that I had experienced something life-changing. And said so. They could hear it beyond my words, feel it in my voice, and sense it in the calmness I exhibited.

My mother suggested I begin writing the experience. So in the summer of 1982, I began making notes and constructing an outline. I jotted down quotes from the hilarious incidents that immediately began to prove—as if I needed further proof—that something absolutely extraordinary has occurred deep in my psyche and was being felt throughout my personality.