Remodeling

I had a set of vivid dreams last night.

(Wonder where the line is between bad content and nightmare? LOL)

—

The first started in a weirdly arranged apartment, with painted cinder block walls, that was a total disaster. Piles of stuff everywhere on the floor, no attempt at organization at all to be seen anywhere.

The rooms were all fairly small, and kind of oddly shaped, and in an odd arrangement. The kitchen was off of a bedroom for example.

It’s not anywhere that really resembles anywhere I know of in real life, but I knew this place was mine. (No kid or other housemate was involved anywhere in either dream.)

One of the leaders of the church (in real life) came to the door in the dream. Now, in real life, I know this guy’s name, but am pretty sure he’d have no idea what mine was, so it’s not like he’s a friend or someone who knows me well or who would have the foggiest idea where I live.

Last summer he gave a message using an illustration involving his extreme battle against crabgrass in his lawn… complete with pictures that looked to me like a perfectly kept golf course type lawn… and apparently were supposed to be pictures of its “awful” problem with this apparently bad grass. So he’s someone I’d consider to have standards much higher than mine on things house related.

So I let this guy in, and for some reason, I have to go through the house and show him every room, and what’s in the room.

Even in the dream this was painful and shameful.

But his tone wasn’t harsh, or shocked, or discusted, or blaming, or any of the other tones I would expect as a response from someone, both in the dream and in real life.

It was a saddish tone. One that clearly didn’t approve of this house in the first place let alone it’s condition, but was along the lines of “You don’t have to live with this. You can have better than this.”

No condemnation for not having it better or doing better… or a “You have to fix this”… or a “You know better”… just a gentle sadness, no matter how bad the rooms and the piles of stuff were.

Even so.. it was still massively painful as the tour went through everything…. a feeling that stayed over when I woke up the first time.

And my main thought was being really glad that none of the pastors at the churches I’ve attended in the last 7 years or so make house visits regularly like some of the ones I went to when younger did.

—

I went back to sleep, and right back into a new dream in the same house, with the same guy, with an entirely different tone. In this dream, he was clearly in charge.

He gave instructions to be carried out, then disappeared, then came back to check and re-direct, and then disappeared again.

And then came the bulk of the dream, which was spent basically chasing him around as he went down the street to random neighbors to have me ask them to help with a very particular task for each of them. The main problem here was that while he was able to step directly to their doors, there was this huge ditch between the street and their houses that was deeper than I am tall that I had to climb carefully into, then crawl back up and out of to catch up to him to get to their house.

Where when I arrived, breathless and covered in dirt and mud, I would find him already talking to them, and waiting on me to finally get there to ask them. They all said yes, even though it was humiliating, and I got the impression that the only reason they were saying yes was as a favor to him, not me. Not so much a pity feel, but just a feeling like they were strangers. (None of them stood out as being anyone from real life.)

So I’d come back to the house with them (the ditch being gone on the return trip), and they would help me do whatever small specific task they’d been asked to do, then they just sort of disappeared and it was back to chasing off to the next person’s house.

Eventually, some of my family members came by, and took away a dresser and a bookshelf… the only objects even resembling tools for organization that I’d seen involved… leaving that room empty but for the pile of junk several feet deep covering the entire floor. They were upset because I was changing the house.

I wasn’t exactly upset or anything by this confrontation… just sad. The guy came into the room a bit later, and I told him what had happened. He didn’t react much, positive or negative, about the development. Just acknowledged it, and moved on with re-directing for the next part of the task in that room.

I went over to the opposite corner of the room where he’d told me to do something, but instead of completing it, I curled up in a ball in the corner… tired, dirty, and frustrated that all these little tasks were so hard and only making small dents of progress. But this time he hadn’t left immediately after giving the new instructions.

I asked if he could do it for me since he knew what he was doing, or if one of the recruited neighbors could do it since they were experts on each little task he made me ask them to help with.

I was told no, that he was doing it, by having me do it. And that it had to be done by my choosing to do it and follow through with making it change.

Not mad tone, not sad, just matter of fact.

—

I woke up with the thought on my mind that all of the home makeover style shows really make things a lot easier by sending the families away for a vacation while they tear everything completely apart and rebuild.

Somehow it’s so much easier to just give them permission to have at the entire thing, knowing they will be going through every single thing in the house…. than it is to be there when they are doing it and have to tell them “yes, you can throw away my dresser. Yes, you can go through my closet. Yes, you can rip down that wall”.

So so much easier to just turn it over, walk away, and come back to a house that in no way resembles the one you left… and is all nice and fancy and clean and uncluttered… with the only things openly visible from the old house being things that were just extremely cherished for the positive memories.

Never do you see them sad when they return because their old beat up couch got thrown away. But had they had to be there for the process to approve the decision individually… or even be the one to haul it out themselves… would they fight it more? Being less able to see the future picture than the professional designers, and attached to the object that bring them comfort in the current moment?

—

There’s several different things from the dreams that I think are in it intentionally as a point to be gotten…

But the first and strongest one was that even after the big choice to give God command…. I still have many many areas of little choices that I still have to make the call to allow his plan to happen and follow his directions on achieving that end result… or to curl up in a corner. There’s no running off on vacation and walking back in to everything completely changed. (Well, maybe for some people… but they seem to be the lucky exceptions)

Also, a reinforcement that he’s not mad when I do end up in the corner. Or in the mess in the first place. It’s not the choice he wants, for my benefit, but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s just something to deal with and keep moving on even when the dents seem so small.

Even when I’d rather just turn the keys over and let that cover everything and go to disney.

Class fears

I have a reoccuring fear… a dream that even happens occasionally… 

of classes.. and of being too far behind to ever catch up. 

 

i can only remember one class that this ever happened in… a class in college that did almost everything in group projects, and only had about 4 projects that made up the entire grade. (i always hated school group projects, but thats another rant)

i was sick for part of one of the major projects… and even though my group members had my contact info, none of them ever contacted me. we each had already worked out what parts would be done by whom, so i didn’t think much about it.

when i returned to class, having missed about 3 classes of a twice a week class, the teacher pulled me aside and told me that my group didn’t want me included in their work because they had already reassigned what needed done (project wasn’t due for another 2 weeks) and that she had assumed i must have dropped the class.. so since i would be failing that project i couldnt pass anyway. 

 

i had dropped a few other classes in college… but none that i can remember were from being behind in work. 

and yet… i always had this fear… especially after missing a class or two…. that i would be told i was too far behind and kicked out. even when i logically knew it had no chance of happening, such as a large lecture class.

sometimes in my dreams i’m so far behind that i can’t even remember who the teacher is or where the class meets or what day even.

frequently, its a math class… which makes even less sense, because after an incident with a semester of algebra 2 in 7th grade where i didn’t really try, i was always in math classes that were too easy for me honestly… even in college. math was one of those classes that i usually got each concept fairly quickly, skipped most of the rest of the repetitive homework anytime that i could do so without major penalty, and still coasted by with one of the top scores in the class on tests, giving me a b range usually with the low homework scores mixed in.

 

i graduated from college years ago. i’ve taken no classes since (though there are some i would kind of like to just for my own personal interest… but i’ve yet to justify the time or expense to do so). 

but still… occasionally… it comes. 

 

and its clear enough to guess what the symbolism is… either a fear of being behind in life in general, or a fear of being blindly overconfident being my downfall.

but i’m never really sure how to deal with it.

Church and caves dream

i was in our church, even though it looked nothing like our church and no one at all was familiar until late in the dream. i just knew it was the church.

this wasn’t like a normal church layout, it reminded me of our college student center with a wide curving hallway and many different areas. in the student center they were separate businesses.

the main one was all on a large slope like a theater you entered from the bottom of the slope, but instead of a theater seating layout there were different small groups of seats faced different directions as it went up, and there were various sections of wall coming in making it an odd shape, and i couldn’t find somewhere to sit anywhere.

the next area was completely black even though they were apparently showing a movie. i couldnt see anything, even to get back out, and someone kept yelling for tickets, i think at me but i wasnt sure. i scrambled back out.

the third section seemed to be somewhat underground with brown walls but well lit. it reminded me a bit of the theme mexican restaurant in tulsa. it had lots of people talking to other people in groups, but nobody said anything as i ran around them frantically trying to find a place to dig a small cave to bury a large weird shaped plastic box filled with the  remains of my dead baby.

i eventually found a place, but now we were outside… and it was right behind a woman gardening and a kid who kept asking question, but somehow it managed ti be dug into the side of a hill of grass without anyone realizing it.

i went back inside, and now it was in a large conference hall type room, with various curtains forming a wide hallway between whatever was going on in the main area and the actual walls of the room. and we were running, me and someone else. a few other people were around, but the only two i noticed were as we ran past my pastor and a girl in a band uniform who had a trumpet that had come apart and was everywhere in the hallway. we jumped over the pieces and continued.

somehow i ended up back in the crowded cave like area, and the person i was running with was gone, and i had decided to pick up my friends baby from the nursery. apparently it was due the same time as mine, but it survived. i heard people beside me whisper that they would have been sisters, then the baby’s older brother (about 12 or so) came to pick it up, so i left.

i continued walking, and i found what seemed somehow like a familiar game. it was some sort of challenge to get things un-wedged from this big space… about the size of a car trunk but it was at about chest level. i sat and looked at it for a long time, until my friend arrived. i think this was the same person i was running with, but i’m not sure if it was the friend who had the baby or not. when they arrived, i then very abruptly started ripping things out of the space and piling them onto the floor. they turned into groceries… like a black trashbag full of containers of yogurt in which the bag kept ripping open, and cartons of eggs. everything seemed fine as i pulled them out, but when i looked down on the ground, they were all smashed and trampled. people walking by stepped over my mess and seemed to feel pity but walked on by without bothering me.

suddenly, my pastor reappeared. he seemed amused at the mess, but not in a negative way. he then told my friend and i that someone had asked to have a cave built, and asked if we could do it. my friend had apparently been in the hospital after building a cave recently and only just gotten out that day, and i didnt want to admit i’d already made a cave that day and still had dirty and sore hands. so we said no, but i felt bad, but he didn’t ask any questions as to why.

so he has a flash light, and the three of us go around the curve again and he leads us into an area with similar walls, but a darker place. it was a museum of ancient egypt, but i didnt see anything egyptian or museumish, another of those just know that it is things. my friend made the comment that it was amazing how the things we see as treasures now would have been common and well known and expected to be known by everyone back then.

we continued in the “museum” for about 10 more seconds, then i awoke very sharply and abruptly…. for no apparent reason.

New dreams section

I’ve decided to add a new category for dreams.

For most people dreams probably aren’t a huge deal, but with me, sometimes they can be.

Because usually I don’t dream anything that I can remember when waking up. Or only very vaguely.

But every now and then, I get these certain types of dreams.

It’s kind of hard to describe… there is just a very distinctive feel to them…

These are usually very vivid… but only certain parts. The focus is usually really clear in some areas of apparently relevance, and the rest is all just background.

How vivid? Well, there is one I had about 2 years ago that I can still remember random details of the house featured… a house I don’t know in person.

Anyway, I will explain more in another post… and give a couple of past examples…  but I wanted to go ahead and get this introduction up before I posted the one from this afternoon.