Even obscure dreams have something to offer. Dreams that on first recall I can’t make much sense of often eventually give a nudge onward in one direction or another or some glimmer of encouragement or insight.
Yet it is hard not to be particularly grateful for big dreams that scream, “Listen close- this is SIGNIFICANT!â€
In one of these PAY ATTENTION dreams many years ago, I dreamed I was in a room with this compact little diorama about the size of a dollhouse.
Okay, so most people might yawn when faced with a diorama, but I have always loved tiny things- dollhouses and the miniature Mexican pottery displays that contain whole little worlds. This diorama was like that, so in the dream I went right over to look at it more closely, and I saw that the title of the diorama was, “Molly’s Life.â€
Half the charm of a miniature world is moving the pieces around so that is what I tried to do, but all the pieces were very, very hot. I realized I couldn’t move anything in the diorama.
As I stood back from the diorama, I saw that a figure was holding up the diorama, and I recognized the figure was God. I don’t know how I knew this exactly, but I just did- just like we recognize places in dreams even when they don’t look the same or we just know things in dreams that during daily life might feel hard to believe. In that now, I knew it was God and I felt so very glad that God was holding up the diorama of my life. Then God turned and winked at me, and my gladness changed to bliss.
That dream stuck with me. I wrote it down. I read it again and again. But it is probably all the things that have happened to me since that have made the dream even more precious to me.
Just like everyone else, many things have happened in my life that felt unexpected and completely out of my control. When things have veered from my idea of a good plan, I have often tried to solve and resolve things only to finally surrender to what is. Eventually I had to acknowledge that what happened was the plan for me whether my personality liked it or not.
The dream and these experiences of learning to surrender have encouraged me to pay more attention to my inner guidance about what I can do in a situation and what is not my business but God’s business. Fifteen years since this dream occurred and I am a little quicker to recognize furniture in the diorama that I can’t move before I waste years burning my fingers trying to move immovable objects.
Sometimes it is very painful not to be able to reset the stage and move that furniture. At times like this, the dream consoles me on several levels. Yes, I can’t move the pieces around as I wish, but God not only knows the best arrangement of the pieces but also has a sense of humor. There was something of, “This is a big funny game we are in together and I will see you through.†in the wink. Remembering the wink helps when the game lands me on “Go to Jail†not “Park Placeâ€.
The dream invites me to play the game with my sense of humor too. In between my two weird arm breaks, I managed to fit in other fun stuff like getting disinherited and losing my share in the Adirondack camp we loved so much, but gosh no one could take my sense of humor from me.
I still get to choose my attitude in response to events.
Right now, as I look at the royal blue cast on my arm, covering hardware, stitches and a wilderness of mending bones. I slot my present circumstance under the header of “Things in the Diorama I could not change.â€
When I tripped in the woods with Lizzy and Grace at my side, I broke this second arm in a very similar way as the other arm break four years ago. The surgeon who used an electric drill on my bones and everyone involved are quick to tell me it is no ordinary mess just a matching mess.
“Oops I did it again. “
According to Lizzy, I said this even before my arm hit the ground, and I must say the whole thing had a feeling of inevitability once it began. I am only grateful that I didn’t know this matching arm break was diorama destiny before it happened- that the four years in between breaks I wasn’t consciously waiting for this second fall-
It was bad enough to sit in the woods waiting to go to the hospital and flashing back on the parade of surgery, recuperation and rehab that had suddenly gone from being in my rear view mirror to the entire landscape ahead of me.
As I held my smashed arm, waiting for the ride that would begin this Groundhog Day, I tried to just have faith. My diorama and everyone else’s are held up by God. There is some complicated divine pattern at work for all our lives, and sometimes this pattern is a pretty difficult pill to swallow, but the plan is a good one and all of us are held up with infinite love and tenderness by loving hands.
Which means that for now and maybe for always, my job (besides taking tons of Flower Essences and asking for help and taking direction from those who are trying to help me mend and being as cheerful and as thankful as I can be to dear Jim and all loving family and friends and not taking myself too seriously) is to just trust or as they say, “Let go and let God.
And be grateful I don’t have a third arm.