I am sitting in a hospital room with machines beeping loudly, nurses and doctors coming in every 30 minutes to check her breathing, her blood pressure and her pulse. I am beside her, holding her hand, praying that she will wake up. As I look across to the other side of the hospital bed, I see her mom and dad, crying and talking to her as if she was awake. All we can do is sit there with her, as, over the course of two weeks, she slowly slips away.
This is a recurring dream that I have had the past couple of years. Brandi had been my best friend since around the age of 2. When she was just a toddler, she was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. She had a lung transplant at the age of 12. She blessed our lives until August of 2006, when she passed away at 27 years old.
Another example of this type of recurring dream is about my brother. One where I walk into the ICU room and see him lying there, already passed away. I always wonder in my dream if he was saved when he died. Thoughts race through my mind about what I could have done or said to make sure he knew about God and how important church is. In this dream are also my two nephews, who were left with no one to care for them, no one to teach them the important things in life. I feel responsible for helping raise them and make sure they are always taken care of.
I believe that we dream what is weighing on our mind’s…that even while we sleep, we can’t help but think about the heartache we have experienced or the current stresses in our lives. These two situations were so traumatic for me, that they are hard to forget, even when I am supposed to be getting rest.
Frequently, I have a dreadful dream of getting a phone call, and someone on the other end is telling me that something terrible has happened to my daddy, my husband, or sometimes it is my children. These dreams are often so real that I wake up crying at just the thought of losing any of them. Again, I think this stems from my fear of losing the people closest to me.
There are also the dreams that I have found a lot of my acquaintances have had that are very similar to mine. One such dream is the “falling dream” that I have had off and on since a very young age. It is the one where I am falling, and falling, and falling…and yet I never hit the ground. Sometimes I jerk awake, right before I hit the ground. I did some research on this, and found that falling dreams are an indication of insecurities, instabilities, and anxieties. I think it’s possible that I have these dreams because I feel overwhelmed and out of control in some situations in my life. Maybe I have lost my foothold, just like I feel in this dream.
“Flying dreams” are a favorite of mine. Although I am scared to death of heights any other time, in this particular dream I have no fear whatsoever. I am just flying around, enjoying the scenery, not a care in the world. What is so funny though, is that I use my arms for wings…so in this dream I am actually flapping my arms to stay up high, and then I will just coast for a little while and watch everything just float by. I am not real sure what this dream means, but I would guess it has to do with how things are going well at the present time. Maybe it’s because I feel like I am in control of a situation in my life and I have no fear of what is going on, that I feel like I can handle it. Another thought would be that, since in reality I do not have the ability to fly, my mind is telling me that I can do anything and to not let anyone tell me that I cannot accomplish something.
There is one more odd dream that I would like to share. It is what I call the “my teeth are falling out” dream. Occasionally, in this dream, I am clenching my teeth together extremely hard, and even though I want to and try to stop, I cannot. Then I start feeling my teeth come loose and they start to fall out. I think this particular dream has to do with frustration. Frustration because I feel like no one is listening to me, or that I am not getting through to someone. Perhaps I have deep seated anger or aggression towards someone, and that is my way of getting it out. Another variation of this dream is that I am having a conversation or simply just hanging around the house. All of a sudden, I feel like a tooth is coming loose. I start wiggling them around, trying to figure out what is going on, and they all start to fall out. This dream always freaks me out, because I am very particular about my teeth. Which leads me to believe this dream is about my anxiety over my appearance and how others perceive me.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that all dreams we dream (regardless of if they are happy, strange, or sad) have to do with what is going on in our lives in the present, or what has happened to us in the past. Sometimes we cannot or will not deal with our reality, and dreams are a way of letting our feelings out even though we may not know it.
