I haven't had dreams I remember for years, so last night was very significant. I started dreaming again in December while hospitalized, and that's when I recognized that God was still with me (I was so far down that I'd given up). I didn't think He had abandoned me (I still held on to His promise that He'd never leave or forsake me), but I did think that He was just standing by, like everyone else, just watching me drown and not thinking me worth the effort to even try to help me.
Anyway, to the dream...I was leaving someplace at night, and these three women were following me, I didn't immediately recognize that they were following me until we were in an area with fewer people. As I tried to rush to my car, they started to rush me. The fear I felt awakened me.
When my heart calmed down enough from that fright, I began to understand it's significance. I was bombarded last year with trial after test after trial after test, most of them not having the "courtesy" to wait until the last test or trial was over, but kept mounting at sometimes multiple tests at the same time of varying intensities. I let a few people (I thought were friends) know what was going on and tried to keep it moving. Most of the time though, I was drowning. I kept saying I was tired, or overwhelmed, and I would get tepid responses, if I got responses at all.
But I'm descending again, so moving on...
The three women represented depression, bitterness, and hopelessness. They had been dogging my heels all this time, but I didn't recognize it until I saw how my circle kept dwindling. The more I cried out, the smaller my circle got. Some people asked me where my faith was, and how was my prayer life. I was so deep in despair, and I was so overwhelmed, they were almost non-existent. I didn't even believe that God heard me anymore, because I couldn't believe that He could not only allow all this stuff to happen at the same time, but that i would be abandoned by the very people I thought He had sent to help me get through this excruciatingly gruesome time in my life. I found out, the painful way, that they were not (my heart is still in recovery over that one).
As I said, my circle got smaller, but it didn't totally disintegrate, and there were a few who hung in there with me, who recognized that my need for contact was vital to my sanity and healing. They prayed with and for me, offered help, called me while I was in the hospital, offered to come take care of me while I recuperated, and have kept checking on me even to this day.
I'm still battling bitterness but less and less because I had to just let go of the selfish ones. Because of how I am, I dismiss selfishness often at the expense of my own emotional health. Well, that's another lesson learned, no more. If you were one of those to whom I offered an ear, a shoulder, advice, etc. while I was going through my own hell, yet you never even inquired about my well-being, you may have noticed a fierce cooling off...well, that's because of you...bye!
I now have recovered enough strength and faith to get back on the prayer wagon, and my desire to reestablish my relationship with God has been greatly rekindled. I have gained some more wisdom and insight into humanity that will probably remind me to keep my circle extremely small. I have to really trust God to send whom He chooses for my circle, and not despair so much when the Judases appear because they too, unfortunately, are vital to my story.
This wasn't one of these happy stories, but it is to serve as medicine. Sometimes life serves us bitter pills that destroy some parts of us, but if those parts aren't destroyed, 1. they will hinder us from moving forward, and 2. their destruction now allows room for more of the beneficial things to be planted and flourish and expand.
From the broken, but healing, heart of
The Psalmist
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