Just a Dream



I had this dream the other night.  There was a daddy hawk and a baby hawk.  Dad was out teaching the little one to hunt.  The little hawk had managed to swoop up a baby squirrel on his first attempt.  My first instinct was horror, but since nature doesn't seem to have the same values, I swept that aside and was proud of the little hawk.  He was doing exactly what he was made to do-living as a hawk.  After his lunch, the little hawk rested as his dad flew off a little ahead of him.

The stillness and rightness of the moment was interrupted by a scrambling from a bush to the right.  Erupting ferociously and attacking the young hawk was the mother squirrel.  She was larger than the little one and angry.  She stunned me by picking up the hawk.  Then she turned him upside down and slammed him to the ground breaking his neck in a dreadful crunching sound. 

The feeling of horror washed over me again.  This time, I couldn't shake it.  It wasn't right.  Mama squirrel marched triumphantly away as I gazed sadly at the young hawk, now empty and still.

Then I woke up.

My wise husband soothed me, "It's just a dream," but that hasn't lessened the sting.  It didn't lessen the pull that maybe there is something there for me to think about.   While I don't usually give much weight to dreams, perhaps it is because the last couple weeks have been so heavy that I am paying attention to more things around me.  Perhaps even looking for answers.

Sometimes there are waking dreams.  I imagine myself to be a cheerful, easy going, forgiving person.  I'm not.  I am a brooder.  My function is to be useful.  So I will be.  But then something breaks and there is betrayal.  Like lately.  I feel like I don't matter.  I am taken for granted.  Of course, I am polite so I will try not to bother you with my heart.  I may not ever talk about it.  I stuff it down, to be mature.  And then it all comes flooding back like bile, like an infant's lunch.

I have allowed this sense of betrayal to solidify into resentments.  And resentments seem to self replicate. 

Mad at someone at work?  Great, maybe I will continue to be indignant at home.  Now I have a resentment against my husband who hates my new wave music.  Looking at my facebook page to ignore him, I see no one liked my amazing comment, so I cop a resentment against some idiot who has more likes than me......and on it goes.

This morning my back pain kept waking me up.  Since sleep apparently wasn't happening, I decided to pray.  And some how, in some way, a light bulb went off.

Idolatry.

As I have struggled with grief and uncertainty, I have wrestled with God's sovereignty. I'll admit it. Some people struggle well. I struggle messy. And when God gets smaller, I take up His job or give it to other people or things.

I forget who I am & whose I am.  Either I am god or the approval of my job is my god or my relationship is my god.  I am either an angry empress of the universe whose will must be obeyed, or a sullen servant of these false gods whose fortune changes with the favor of my friends, boss, or family.  I want a different burden, a different life, a different job, a different degree, a different....whatever God has blessed me with is inadequate or wrong.  There is no gratitude.  Because I am coveting other idols.

Really?  C'mon.  Haven't I grown?  Is this really all the farther that I have come in this journey?

Yep.  But I can identify the mess now.  I can see the abscess of sin growing, infecting the tissue around it.  And I know the remedy-seek forgiveness and grant forgiveness.

Easy?  Not for me. 

I still don't know what the dream meant.  The hawk was in God's will and the squirrel wasn't?  I am the mother squirrel?  Cartoon animals don't belong in the forest?  The strawberry pie didn't sit well?  I suppose it doesn't matter.  It really was just a dream.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more