I had an opportunity to attend a seminar on dream interpretation this weekend but had to turn it down due to other committments. However, the bad dream that woke me up early this morning, well, I think I can interpret it at least somewhat accurately all on my own.
In my dream my husband had to be away for a combined church service between one of our congregations and a visiting group from our deanery....I don't know who any of those people were as they certainly were not people I have ever met in real life.
For some reason we had to meet in a house...in a combined kitchen/dining room. My husband had appointed me to be in charge of the service and had approved my sermon. To start with everything was going well. The visitors had happily taken up their assigned parts in the service, our own congregation held up their end and things were going smoothly until a few minutes before I was to preach.
At that point my husband appeared for some unexplained reason. He started making himself a cup of tea (of COURSE he was making tea, as those of you who know my husband will be chuckling about), and he also interrupted the flow of the service by telling us where he had been and how what he had learned there went hand in hand with what I was about to talk about in my sermon. He went on and on to the point where he essentially used up all the time allotted for my sermon. I could feel some panic and resentment beginning to rise.
As he was talking some more people came into the room. They were friends of the visiting congregation but were not there for church. They wanted to visit their friends and so as my husband was winding up his talk, they were chatting amongst themselves and interrupting the entire assembly. As my husband completed his talk and I realized there would be no time for my sermon, I also realized that the whole group had gotten completely out of hand. Chat, chat, chat, yak, yak, yak.....
I hollered to get everyone's attention back but one couple just kept talking. I asked them if they could please stop until we were finished the last part of our service and they looked at me and said, "You mean WE have to be quiet too?? But we aren't here for church, we are here to visit." And they began talking again. I tried to explain, I tried to finish the service but by then a free-for-all had erupted all around me and no one listened so I walked out of the room and out of the house, angry, resentful, crying.
I woke up choking and spluttering, heart racing and feeling angry and panicked.
It doesn't take a special seminar to interpret that dream. What I felt in the dream and when I first woke up was complete impotence....impotence over my life, a complete lack of control over my life's circumstances and a lot of frustration in dealing with being as socially and culturally isolated as I have been for the past nearly 10 years.
I suspect what set this dream up is the cancellation of plans on Sunday that I have been looking forward to for several weeks, because something came up in the ministry, in yet anothr town, that requires our attendence. It involves another 6 hour round trip of driving we hadn't expected when we made our own plans, more pot luck meals that neither of us can eat due to our health issues and so requiring even more time away from our own personal morning committment in order to find some food to take for ourselves, missing out on some very much needed social engagements with old friends and basically taking over our entire day, ruining every plan we had made and were so excited about....probably the last time we could have seen our old friends for a very long time...sigh.....
It is a most rare experience that I ever feel resentful or angry when a ministry event interferes with the rest of our life. When you are in full time ministry it IS your life. I am not sure why this one change of plans is hitting me so hard and making me so disproportionately angry inside to the point where I am having nightmares. It isn't the dream that needs interpreting in this case, it is the reason for it and then some soul searching to figure out how to deal more maturely and less emotionally over the cancellation of a few personal plans that should be somewhat disappointing, but not so anger inducing that I have such a dream and such an emotional response to it.
My concern is that a root of bitterness is forming within me. I need to be praying and seeking God to get that root pulled out and replaced with the peace and joy I usually experience over anything ministry related.
As I look back on some of the foods I have been trying to reintroduce to my diet over the past month, I am possibly seeing a correlation between intake and the beginning of this emotional upheaval...something to further investigate, that is for sure. I hope these tiny feelings of disappointment burgeoning to the point of rage are a result of my diet and not from a formation of bitterness in my heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment