My latest dream.

Throughout the entire ordeal with Dustin, my dream life has been very interesting. During the worst of the worst, my dreams would sometimes reveal things to me ahead of time. My dreams often correlated with what was going on with me and my emotional state, and recently, since the divorce, my dreams have been a place where God has shown me some of the things that I still need to work through in my heart. In place of seeing a counselor, I feel like God has used some of these dreams to counsel me through this experience, and to help me process through some things. Most of my dreams over the past few years were about anger, and how I was (or wasn't) dealing with that anger. One of the most significant recurring dreams was my trying to hit Dustin... all to no avail (I could never actually hit him). But then after something had happened when I was finally able to express my anger to Dustin, I had a dream soon thereafter where I was actually able to hit him, to make impact, for the first time. Then another dream came several months ago, where Dustin told me that he was getting remarried... and my anger instantly took over me in that dream. As soon as I woke up, I knew that there was still some anger that I needed to process through, and at the same time, I realized that that dream was possibly preparing me for the news of D getting engaged (which came to be true, as I have since found out in the past couple of weeks that he is, in fact, going to be remarried).

This latest dream happened just about two weeks ago... pretty soon after I had found out that Dustin was engaged. It was a pretty long dream, with a few different scenes, but I'm just going to write out the main scene here - the one with the most significance. So here goes...

All of a sudden I had Brody in my arms... I was holding him and hanging out w/ him outside, in a courtyard with a pathway leading between different buildings on the sides. Brody and I were bending down in the courtyard to pick some flowers - one for him to bring to his mommy, and one that I picked to put in my hair.

Then I see Dustin. He is on the same little pathway that Brody and I are on, where we had just picked the flowers (still outside in this courtyard area). I think he may have been talking w/ someone, but when I stood up and started walking toward him, the other person had already left. So here we are, walking toward each other. We make eye contact, but neither of us stops, neither of us says anything. We just walk right past each other - and at the moment we're passing each other, we are walking underneath this huge tan umbrella (kind of like what you'd see on a patio by the pool or something). I pass him, and pause at the end of the umbrella before stepping out and continuing on the pathway. I stop... and I am completely frozen. Part of me wants to run back to him, to talk to him, to make him talk to me. But it was like I just somehow knew that he wasn't going to look back, that he had walked past and that he was going to keep on walking without looking back... he would never turn back to me. I remember that I was still holding Brody (who had been silent and not really a part of this situation), and at this point I'm aware of him again, and I remember talking to myself, telling myself to move, that I had to move. And I did - I took that next step, away from Dustin.

This scene was definitely the most significant to me and the one that still stands out to me more than anything else in the dream. In all of my past dreams w/ D, I have wanted to kick/punch/tear at him. I've wanted to yell and scream at him, to make him see and feel a portion of the pain that he has inflicted on me. But in this scene from this particular dream, I had no anger. I don't even know what the emotions were. I'm sure that in future 'Dustin dreams' I may have that sense of anger again, but for this one, this 'walking away' dream - there was no anger. Just a glance in his eyes, then walking past him, that last pause as I was frozen in place for a moment... and finally, stepped away and continued on.


Interesting points about the dream
(random musings and rambling thoughts as I attempt to sort through this dream and what it means for me...)

-Walking under the umbrella - I don't know why that is significant; MAYBE it's not significant at all, but the next morning and all throughout that day, I couldn't help but wonder if my subconscious threw that visual picture into this dream as something that correlates to the marriage chuppa. About a year or so ago, I read Rob Bell's "Sex God" book, and really liked his chapter on the chuppa - since then, I've thought about how I'd like to be married under a chuppa one day, if I ever get remarried. I don't know why there was an umbrella in this dream, and I don't know if my interpretation is wrong or if I'm over-analyzing it, but I just can't get the image of chuppa out of my mind as I think back on that slow-motion, extremely significant scene in my dream. And I can't help but wonder - is this dream symbolizing what happened - the fact that D has chosen to leave this marriage commitment, to leave me, to give up on what was sacred...? The fact that in the dream he walked past me - and then how it took me a long time to tell myself to move out from under the umbrella and walk away without looking back or running back to him... Maybe it symbolizes the ending, the giving up, the letting go. Showing how hard it was for me to walk away from this sacred commitment, to let it go. To let Dustin go as he deliberately walked away from this covenant, as he stepped out from under the marriage chuppa, broke that bond, and left me and our marriage. In any case, this dream does signify the freedom that I am experiencing in this season of my life. The freedom to move on, and the freedom to let Dustin go. The freedom that comes from taking those next steps, from walking away without looking back or wondering what could have been. The freedom that comes from not letting someone control you through hoping for justice or revenge. The freedom of saying that Jesus' death on the cross is more than enough payment for any injustice that I experienced. This is the freedom that only God can give... and I am so very thankful that he is giving it to me.

And as I sit here thinking about the chuppa, what it was intended to symbolize... I can't help but wonder if God has another man out there for me, who will one day meet me under our marriage chuppa. If He does have someone out there for me, I can tell you right now that the symbolism of the chuppa will bring me to tears. If that day does come, I know that I will be free to make that commitment to the man God has prepared me for, and I will be honored to stand under a simple piece of cloth attached to four poles, to create a new covenant.