The Nightmare and the Father

Today, I'm going to tell you about a dream I had once.  Specifically, it was a nightmare, and I was 4 or 5.  If this tells you anything about me, it's that my imagination is active and my memory is vivid.

The dream took place in our home in Richmond, VA (where I lived at the time).  My mother was in the kitchen, which had a peninsula.  If you were standing in our kitchen looking over the peninsula, the stove would be behind you, and our breakfast nook was in front of you.  To the right was an open doorway into our formal dining room, and along the wall that housed that doorway, which extended into the breakfast nook, was my play kitchen.  It was off white with teal and yellow accessories, and it had a table that could lift up or collapse.  There was a tall, skinny man with a white beard sitting on a barstool at our peninsula (though, we never had barstools at our peninsula), who was putting together a wooden toy truck.  I do not know who this man was, though it has been speculated that he represented my Granddaddy, who was not tall and skinny, nor bearded, but he was a carpenter.  My daddy had taken one of the kitchen chairs over to the play kitchen and had his head down on the little table that extended off the side, taking a nap.  I was helping my mother.

She was making candles, and I was setting them up on the dining room table for display.  I believe she was perhaps going to have a candle sale party (not a kind of party I ever remember her hosting, but I do remember her holding Mary Kay and Pampered Chef parties).  After taking several trips back and forth between the kitchen and dining room with the candles, I went in to place another candle on the table, and all the candles had morphed into three dirty, scary "bad men", as I called them.  One of them was very fat, another was very skinny, and I think the other man must have been nothing notable, because I do not remember what he looked like.  They wore dirty brown clothes, similar to what the chimney sweeps wore in Mary Poppins.  

I stood there, frozen, and the men just sat there and snarled at me.  The fat one said to me, "Come here, little girl," in a raspy, rugged voice, and I spun around to run.  He reached out to swipe at me, but he did not get up, and I felt his fingers in my long curly hair as I took off running out of the room.  He didn't follow me, and he didn't make anymore noise.

I tapped my daddy on the shoulder.  He lifted his head up, and I asked if I could join him.  He pulled me into his lap, and we fell asleep.

When I woke up from that nightmare, I told my whole family about it.  My mother still remembers when I had that dream because it shook me so much.  She believes it stemmed from a Nintendo64 Mickey Mouse game that involved the player jumping over little evil candles.  Later that day, my mother took my brother and me to the YMCA, where she took an aerobics class, and we went to the childcare area, called Busy Bees.  I remember that we sat in a big circle and shared something about our week, and my brother sat by me with his arms around me.  When it was my turn to share, he told about my scary dream.  That is how significant that dream felt to me.  

To this day, I still feel anxiety about the man swiping at me.  I am often scared of strangers and try not to walk so closely that someone could swipe at me and get me.  I've had other dreams of people swiping at me, grabbing me off my bike or my horse when I'm out and about.  

But the most important part of that dream was the very end, where I sought comfort in my daddy's lap.  I knew the safest place was in his arms; it always had been, and it always will be.  As an infant, I slept on his chest; as a toddler and little girl, he snuggled me in my own bed until I fell asleep (though I ended up between my parents a lot of the time), and all the way up through high school, I would lie on the couch with my head on his belly and fall asleep while my parents watched TV in the evenings.  Even in my dreams, he provided the comfort and safety that I needed. 

I didn't see it for what it was until recently.  I looked at that dream and focused on the scary part - the fact that someone swiped at me and touched my hair.  When I began to focus on the last part, where I found refuge in my father's arms, that is when I realized the purpose of that dream.

In life, we often look at the frightening world around us, but how wonderful that we have a Father who is always there with His arms open wide, with room in His lap for us!  When Satan is prowling, the Father is there.  When storms are brewing, winds are blowing, thunder is clapping, the Father is there.  When temptation knocks on the door, the Father is still there.  No matter where we go, what we do, and when we come back, the Father is there.  When our earthly fathers fail, as even the best fathers do because they are human, our Heavenly Father is still there.  

When I find myself riddled with anxiety and fear, I know that I can turn to my Father, that he is always there.  I need only run to Him.

My family has always been big into interpreting dreams.  We believe that the subconscious or the supernatural (God) can bring awareness to certain situations through dreaming.  What kind of symbolism have you found in your dreams, and how have they helped shape your perspectives?

Love, Lynwood