buffeted

I tend to have a rich and colorful dream life. Once the lights are out and I'm warm under the covers, a new life begins after I surrender to that deep and restful state of unconsciousness. I only occasionally remember what happens when I wake up. But I can't shake last night's dream. It was too real, still covering me like an invisible cloak.

Yesterday, I left work about halfway through my day because I was profoundly and deeply tired. My limbs were heavy and my head felt as though it was a bowling ball balancing precariously on a broomstick. I slumped in my chair, unable to concentrate. I was supposed to conduct a training session, but couldn't even contemplate how I was going to make it through the day feeling like this. I had consumed a latte already and was on my second cup of black tea. So deigning to practice what I preach, I decided to take myself home and rest.

I lay in bed for two hours, but didn't really sleep. It was restful though; I felt well as long as I was hidden from the shafts light penetrating my bedroom blinds, wrapped in the darkness and warmth of the bed coverings.

After about two hours, I went downstairs and did some work on my book project; the words are coming naturally and easily; even I am surprised with how much there is to tell. Later on, I had a healthy dinner and made my way to bed early.

I slipped into unconsciousness easily. And then came the dream.

In my dream I was in my bed, but unable to sleep. I was being tossed about, gusts of air pushing me, moving me from where I lay, enveloping me; they were lifting me inches off the bed, spinning me about in the air, tossing me back over and over again. I cried out for Jesus, over and over again. I screamed His name. I screamed until my throat was raw with it. The room was filled with a taunting and demonic laughter. Before long I felt a hand was clasped tightly over my mouth. Suddenly I was unable to breathe or scream. I continued to cry out in my spirit for Jesus.

In the name of Jesus!! I shouted in my spirit. In the name of Jesus!!

Inside this dream, I remembered another dream from several months ago. I was secretly pregnant, having managed to keep it hidden from everyone around me. For months, I carried the growing child with me secretly. I had taken myself to the hospital when the labor pains came on. As I lay in the hospital bed breathing, pushing, giving birth, a familiar face was beside me, holding my hand. The face was my mom's, but I knew in my soul it was Jesus. I looked away after the child was out of me, a squealing little girl who was the embodiment of my shame, something I had kept hidden and secret, now squealing and alive and outside of me. Not hidden anymore. I clenched my eyes and kept my face turned. I knew she was safe as she was carried away, though I did not know where she was taken.

In my dream, I couldn't remember if this had actually happened to me, or if I was remembering another dream inside this dream. I felt the shame as fresh as if it were yesterday, as real as if had actually happened, as if I had actually given birth to an infant, looking away from her, not giving her a name. I was unable to distinguish between the dream and my waking life.

As this dream came to the front of my memory, I was still tossed and thrown about as if I were no more than a leaf on the wind, being bounced off the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. My muffled screaming was swallowed in the escalating and cackling laughter around me. Like a pinball, my body continued to bounce off the walls and back again as they pushed and threw me. I felt bruised and battered, I could feel myself going limp. I was suffocating, feeling the winds rush tightly around my body, closing in on me, unrelenting. My arms and legs were bound, I was frozen. A heavy weight rested on my chest like a boulder, pinning me to the bed.

I could not move, nor could I cry out.

Then in my dream, the door opened and light spilled in. The hand disappeared from my mouth and the cackling laughter was silenced. I lay still and the rushing around me slowed until all was still. In the guise of a face both intensely familiar and deeply comforting, Jesus came and sat beside me on my bed. He looked just like my mom again. My hand reached out for him, grabbing at his calf, the most reachable piece of him from where I lay.

What's wrong? he asked softly, his gentle gaze holding my own.

I am buffeted, I choked. I could barely speak, still gasping for air.

Let me help you breathe, he said.

And slowly I woke up, taking in slow, deep lungfulls of air. I looked at my clock, reasoning that it must be close to morning. I was surprised to learn it had not yet been an hour since I first went to bed.

I looked about the same dark room, seeing the faint outlines of the walls against which I had been tossed, as though to check for damage. The room was intact. No visible evidence existed of what I had experienced so vividly in my dream.

And I was breathing. In and out, in and out, deeply. With relief. Safe. Rescued. Breathing.

I returned to sleep easily, sleeping deeply and soundly the remainder of the night. In my body today, I am still deeply tired; I am keenly aware I will need to be deliberate about getting enough sleep over the next few days. But inside that fatigue, deep inside my body rests a bone-deep knowledge that this pervading tiredness comes from having fought hard, from being rescued from an enemy; my body was battered and tossed, but I am alive and well and breathing, having been carried to the right side of victory by Jehovah, the God who rescues.