The Way He Does It

I had a dream last night. That may not sound like an earth shattering event, but it can be a turning point in my life. You see, God often talks to me through dreams, and I usually dream almost nightly. But its been about a month or more since I've had a dream. It's been a month of so many changes and disappointments and momentous celebrations that signal a turning point in our life. During this time things got very quiet inside me. I was wrestling with hope and despair, clarity and confusion. I had not anticipated that I was going to go through such a strange season of strained relationships and radical changes.

"There is nothing miraculous or mysterious about the things we can explain. We control what we are able to explain, consequently it is only natural to seek an explanation for everything"(My Utmost for His Highest). But when we can't control whats happening around us, when we don't have an authoritative explanation or proclamation to calm the turbulent waters, things can get very troubled. We want everything we go through to be meaningful and useful for our spiritual growth. But often we don't see what's happening. We don't understand what's happening. We feel things are out of control and therefore that we are in a very precarious situation.

Here's how God speaks to my heart when it is beating fast and my eyes are looking heavenward with hope and confusion: He speaks to me through a dream. Last night's dream was about me explaining to a woman what had been going on in my life these last number of years. And I was not recounting my successes and my glorious moments. I was telling her about where we had felt lost, where we had failed, what moments we had wondered where God was.

This woman was an old acquaintance that I never knew that well. But I knew she represented spiritual integrity. She and her husband had been influential people in our life. My husband and I had connected with this couple in their passion to serve Christ, to take chances, to be authentic, and therefore to come across as very real, very human, and without all the answers.

So as we spoke to each other in my dream, there was this sense of me not having to explain why I was not further along than I was. There was a sense of peace about having had problems, delays, and times of disappointment. She asked me a couple of insightful questions that made me ponder a bit. And then we talked about what her needs were, what her hopes were, and she and I were smiling as she did this. Neither of us had all the answers. But we both had God as our guide. We felt good about that. We felt victorious about that.

So this morning I woke up and felt a burden lifted from my shoulders. God had arranged a very helpful counseling session for me, and it happened in a dream. It was miraculous. It was mysterious. I can't explain how I absorbed the grace, the hope, the clarity that God offered to me in this dream. But I can tell you that I love the way God loves me. When I feel like things are out of control, He mysteriously and miraculously comes to me and whispers insight and peace to my soul.