Nightmares

Last night, I had two nightmares that are leaving me feeling a little...well, unnerved this morning.

Both dreams were quite long and involved, as my dreams tend to be.  I dream very vividly and with lots of detail.  The first one, involved a zombie.  I woke up from that one completely weirded out, feeling around in the dark to make sure I was in my own bed.  I actually got up and turned on the hall night light, for reassurance.  Then after Schmitty had purred me back to sleep, I dreamed about huge black furry spiders that came out of pizza boxes and chased me around, jumping at me.  *shudder*

I wrote on Facebook that I never have nightmares. Mostly, if I have a bad dream, they will be more sad or painful, and sometimes I wake up crying.  A friend reminding me that a dream that leaves me crying is also a nightmare.  When I read her comment, I remembered that in last nights' dreams, both of which involved long, complicated (and, because they were dreams, fairly nonsensical) story lines, the thing that woke me up wasn't the zombie or the spiders.  I coped with the zombie and spiders, in the dreams (quite heroically, by the way, but that's another blog post). The thing that startled me awake, in both dreams, were painful interactions with people.

At the end of the zombie dream, I was being accused of something that I had not done.  In the spider dream, I was desperately trying to clean up a house to avoid criticism and a verbal attack by someone who was coming to the house.  In both scenarios, I was emotionally devastated.

To be honest, these situations in my dreams accurately indicate deeply painful and traumatic experiences that I have gone through.  And I'm not talking about the zombie or the spiders.

Being rejected, lied about, falsely accused, judged and condemned is scary business.  I know that I am not the only one who has experienced these things.  While intellectually, we may know that the love of God trumps all human rejection, and that we are more than the sum of the ugly words thrown at us, the truth is that emotional healing takes time. We need to be gentle with ourselves.  And we can trust God with our healing if we've asked Him for help.  One of the ways I show my faith in God's healing is by choosing to be open about my weaknesses and fears here on this blog, knowing full well that some may read what I am thinking and feeling and walk away from me because of it.  I may not always feel brave about it, but I know that God is bigger than my fear. That means everything to me.

I have to be as honest as I can about who I am.  Spiders and zombies are scary.  False accusations, lies, judgment and rejection are scarier.  But do you know what I think is scarier than all of those things put together?  Losing myself, my voice, my relationship with God and my ability to trust, love, hope and dream in a confused, fearful, miserable people-pleasing cloud of self-protective dust and debris.

Now THAT would be a real nightmare!