Dreams have revealed, inspired, awakened, and even changed history. By virtue of their mysteriousness, they tend to fascinate even the most blasé amongst us. When I was a little girl, I was capable of lucid dreaming. Knowing that I could control my dreams, I would fly out my bedroom window, up and over the rooftops of our neighborhood, and revel in the amazing feeling of lightness and freedom. Sometimes as a child I dreamed the world was underwater, and I could swim from room to room as though our home were plunged in a gigantic fishbowl. Upon reflection, no wonder then my children’s book was written in a magical undersea setting, fulfilling my childhood dreams through fiction.
I have swam since I can remember and have always felt right at home in and around water, so naturally the dream I had as an adult that most stirred and inspired me involved the ocean. The sea manages to strike awe, provide calmness, and produce fear in me in a mélange of senses, and the dream I had encompassed all those emotions. I knew that my subconscious was telling me something and I needed to listen. At the time of this dream, I was going through a divorce I chose, but I was terrified of where I was going and where I would end up. I was a stay-at-home mother with two young sons and a fifteen-year-old diploma that was not in demand. I had no idea how I would financially support myself, provide some semblance of a family for my children, and find the self I had lost many years before. So this dream told me what I needed and wanted the most—to know that things would be okay. Had I more faith in God, I could have known this from the start, but perhaps it is in those moments of little faith that God speaks to us in subliminal ways, and this time through the very brain chemistry that He created. Although my dream was simplistic in its nature and perhaps a bit cliché, it had a profound impact on me.
The snow was deep and bitter cold, and I was trudging up a steep grade. I made painstaking slow progress up the mountain until I reached its apex. Before me in the distance was an ocean of sapphire. The scene was so breathtaking that the photographer in me reached for my bag, yet I had left it behind and stood there empty-handed. Deciding to take it all in and make a mental picture, I observed that the snow continued down the course of the mountain slope, stretching itself out to meet the waves of the sea. Off in the horizon was the reflection of a glorious moon, yet there was no lunar object in the sky to be seen. Inspired, I had a strong desire and sense of urgency to plot a way through the resistant snow, dive into the warm waters, and swim out to touch the moon. A sense of peace and calmness overtook me as I began my descent.
As I look back on the last few years of my life, I found a way to earn an advance degree, begin a small business to support myself through school, provide a smaller, but stable and loving single parent family for my children, and begin a career in my 40s. It sometimes felt like I would never make it to the shoreline. Yet here I am now, touching the moon. And I have since learned that I may have my moments of panic, frustration, and disappointment, but somehow, someway, like a lighthouse, God will always shine a beacon of light for us, we just have to be open to receiving it and prepare ourselves for the journey, knowing all the while that we will be okay.
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