A Dream

July 7, 2017

Sunday night, God gave me a dream. It wasn’t the dream I was hoping for or expecting (which is how God works) but it was what I asked for (which is also how God works). A few years ago, I had seen a movie where a father had a dream of his son, who had been killed in a tragic accident, running and laughing through beautiful fields and it brought him out of his depression and into a renewed hope. That was what I had been asking God for from the beginning – let me see Keren and know that she is okay.

Instead, my dream went like this: I was called to the hospital. They took me into a room and told me that Keren was alive. I couldn’t understand because we had been through the funeral, it had been weeks since the accident. But they told me that a nurse realized she was breathing before they took her to the funeral home and rescued her. As dreams go, this didn’t make sense, but the next moment they brought her in to me. She was breathing and moving and I was holding her. I could feel her skin and cuddle her close and listen to her breathing. But the whole time I couldn’t understand it.

When I went to show the kids, they were just stunned, not happy. Phoebe even hid behind her daddy with her head down. Then I kept thinking, “How am I going to explain this to everyone?” It didn’t seem right. I had accepted that she was gone and now she was here. It was kind-of an anti-climactic moment.

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning in a panic. How was I supposed to process this? I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t excited, I felt guilty. Why didn’t I respond the way I was supposed to when I saw her? Why weren’t the kids happy? Why was I worried about everyone else but her?

I talked with Joel about it and my friends that were still here from Tennessee. I didn’t want to read too much into it at first because I wasn’t in a quiet place to contemplate it – there were a lot of people at my house. So I’ve been thinking about it and realized, maybe, what it meant.

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open doors. And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore!” This is the song God placed on my heart this morning. The reason I didn’t respond in the “right” way was because Keren wasn’t home anymore, she was back on earth. And that was wrong.

After the concert on June 11, I went into a depression. Life slowed way down and I was having serious difficulty moving in any direction but down. I would force myself to try and have fun, but I would quickly find myself short of patience and gentleness. I just wanted to be in my bed and not have to do anything. I was worried about our friends from Tennessee coming in because I didn’t know if I could handle that many people being around all the time. I cried every day, sometimes all day, with little whispers of calm but not much. But after this dream, something lifted off of me – this weight that has been making my eyes feel heavy and my heart ache constantly.

I’m still sad and I cried last night when something reminded me of her. We ate our first meal in Delmer and Delores’s house that is now Joel’s sister’s house this week and it was tough. But I can look at the picture of the three of them on my wall and feel at home because they are home.

Praise God that He knows what we need and when we need it!