What Lifts Us Up

This accounting is actually about two different dreams from the same night. I even feel that I was given to understand their meaning, so I consider them especially important.

In the first dream, I was at a house with my extended family for some happy gathering, and – this is where dream special effects comes in so handy – even though the windows were closed, a wind started blowing through the house. Riding on the wind were several thousand balloons, each about two feet in diameter, and several thousand birds, about the size of pigeons. They arrived in sets, e.g., two hundred blue balloons followed by two hundred blue birds; then two hundred red balloons followed by two hundred red birds; 200 green balloons, 200 green birds; etc. They were all moving remarkably fast, and it was a testament to dream technology that none of the balloons popped in the little house, even though they were flying through the walls and lamps and couches. None of them flew through people, however. We were trying to catch the balloons, naturally (who wouldn’t want a big shiny balloon?) while trying to stay out of “poop range” of all those birds (not that any of the birds did anything, but how were we to know the capabilities of birds who could fly through walls?).

I don’t remember who it was, but someone standing near me caught one of the balloons; but not me. After all the balloons and birds had gone, which only took about a minute’s time, we all began to hear this strange sound: sort of like a warning siren, only higher pitched and all over the place all at once. Other than the fact that it sounded irritating and a little eerie, it didn’t bother me. But other people around me (NOT the one with the balloon, though) all faced the same direction and stood at attention while the sound was going on. Once it stopped, they stood still for another moment, and then they all turned toward the person with the balloon, and the few of us standing nearby who also did not seem to be affected. Everyone’s eyes now glowed with a red fire, and they began to come toward us. I “knew” in that way of dreams that we were going to be eaten alive – literally – by these creatures who until recently had been the people that I loved.

Fortunately, my brain decided that this was not where it wanted to be, and woke me up. Or perhaps it was the baby crying – it’s hard to say. In any event, the baby was crying when I awoke; Mark had already gone back to see which part of the baby might need attention, so I got his bottle ready just in case. That turned out to be the problem, so I spent several minutes holding the baby and propping up his bottle for him.

After he had finished and was sleepily ensconced in his crib once again, I returned to my bed and fell asleep again. At first, I didn’t think the second dream had anything to do with the other one because I was watching my older son play in a sporting event (it was either football or soccer, but for the life of me now I cannot recall which – it may have even switched back and forth in the dream or been some wacky combination of the two).

At the halftime, the wind began to blow and over the horizon came these thousands of balloons and birds again, in the same pattern as before. We thought that it was just a halftime show at first – albeit a rather spectacular one, especially for an elementary school game. The balloons came from a different direction each time the colors changed, sometimes even having one color beginning before the other had ended. Being the perpetual engineer, even in my sleep, I was wondering how they were able to get the wind to do that without the slightest hint of turbulence. Then I started to get a vague feeling that I had seen this balloon stunt in another dream (I realized that I was dreaming, but at the same time everything in the dream seemed “real”), although I did not remember what happened afterward at this point.

There was a playground near the playing field, with a free-standing slide – one of the neat tall ones. A friend and I had the idea to run to the top of the slide and catch a few balloons as we slid down. I caught two as I went down, but my friend didn’t catch any. There was also a reporter near me, and her photographer, who wanted to get a picture of me with the two balloons for the local paper to report the phenomenon. Just as I turned to give my second balloon to my friend, that strange sound began in this dream as well, and everyone (except for me, my friend, the reporter, and the photographer) turned in the same direction and stood at attention again.

For some reason that I no longer recall, my friend ran over to a trashcan to look for something she had lost, and by the time I got over to her, the balloon that I was going to give her had withered. The sound had stopped, and everyone turned to look at us. I tried to get my friend and the other two to run away with me, and thought they were behind me. I ran over to the slide again, and went up to the top. But when I looked back, some of the newly demonized people were converging on my friend and the other two, while another mob was heading toward me.

The wind began to pick up again, and it finally occurred to me that these balloons represented the gift of faith. Several other conclusions were also brought to my mind:
- Each person has to have his or her own portion of faith. Being around someone who has faith may protect you for a short time, but it will not save you in the end.
- Each person has to reach out for his or her faith while the “wind” of the Spirit is blowing. Once it stops I can’t give my faith to someone else by myself – it is for the Holy Spirit to give, not me.
- Each person has to hold on tightly to his or her faith. If I let go at any time, I will be dead – or worse.

As the people-things began climbing up the slide where I had conveniently trapped myself (duhr!), I “knew” that God wanted me to rely on my faith and let Him take over. I closed my eyes and jumped so that the wind could carry me, not really knowing (or even believing) whether it would. I don’t know where I went, but I knew that I was out of danger. I had a vision of several places in a fast-sequence sort of thing; places where I was taken by my faith, to be sheltered for a time before moving on to another spot.

I was allowed to wake up at that point, before finding out what happened to the rest of the poor world (I never found out what the birds were all about either, unless they were just another manifestation of the Holy Spirit). But it was clear to me that now I must tell all those I love – all those I can – PLEASE reach out for your faith while the wind is still blowing. God sends *so* many opportunities to find Him, in ways that are easy for us to grasp. Look for Him; He is waiting for you.