Like my Blogger ID says, I truly am a dreamer. I don't mean the kind that has spent every nickel of a winning lottery ticket a thousand times in my head - I mean I have dreams. Yes, yes we all have dreams. But sometimes mine seem to go way beyond the normal empty-out-the-trash-of-my-subconscious.
Trouble is, I never really figure out what they mean, and I would rather not turn to some metaphysical book with neatly defined dream definitions. Why? Two reasons: first, as a follower of Christ I take seriously the Bible's admonition to avoid this source of information; second, I believe dreams are too personal and individual to be subject to one author's definition. Finally (okay, that makes three) there are countless examples of God speaking to people through dreams and visions in the Bible. So when I am considering a dream, I often measure it through the lens of God's will. That doesn't mean that I think every dream is a message straight from the top, though.
Anyway, so in the last few weeks I've had some really interesting dreams but they've been snippets of larger ones. In the first, I was walking around some villa outside on a spring day with a group of friends while carrying a branch covered in flowers. Suddenly a group of bees started swarming around the branch, diving back and forth presumably to pollinate them. I was scared, because I really hate being stung, but I noticed they weren't paying any attention to me - just the flowers.
In the second, a week later, I was at a party with some friends. I looked down at the coffee table in front of me and there was this baby boy, wrapped up in a big brown hooded jacket, looking all perfect and healthy and adorable and stuff. I just stared at him, wondering whose baby this was, and he was staring back at me. I think I smiled at him, but don't quite remember.
In the third, just the other night. I suddenly had a mouthful of big, soft, round balls - like giant tapioca beads. They were in my cheeks, like I'd been growing them in there. I was confused, so I took them out and looked at them in the palm of my hand: each one was milky white and somewhat transparent, and held what looked like a tiny seed in the center. I carried them with me to a lab (which was conveniently down a hallway) and was about to have someone analyze them and tell me what they were. Stupid alarm went off before I could find out.
Last week, my therapist told me that dreams tend to mean whatever we, as the dreamer, think they mean. As you can imagine, my mind drifts to images of fertility, with pollinating bees, babies, and eggs. Does it mean anything, or is it a manifestation of stress and the fact that, no matter what's going on in my life, my current state of unresolved infertility is never far from my mind like a ball tied to the end of a long rubber band?
I actually look forward to dreaming. Sometimes my dreams are more enjoyable than my daytime life - others just make me curious and confused. In fact, that's the one thread of commonality between these three: confusion. I'll keep dreaming though...
