Dreams & Rejoicing

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." There they are again: even the stupid demons. Jesus replied, "... I have given you authority... to overcome all the power of the enemy... however, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10:17-20)

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Before my dad ever seemed sick, I started to dream of the ocean. I dreamt of dizzying and crashing waves from the vantage point of a cliff; I dreamt of a wall of water approaching large glass windows of a 30th floor hotel room; and then I started to dream of tidal waves. Sometimes they were tidal pools that would slowly, eerily morph into something larger and more threatening: but these waves would never land. They merely lifted up, on tippy toes, and filled me with terror, as I struggled to perceive a way out or a way to save the ones I loved. I once dreamt that my brothers and I sent Dad out in the waves, knowing it was time to say goodbye: again, I suppose.

After more than a year of these exhausting scenes, and avoiding the beach for fear of their prophetic value (or at least using sarcasm to endure the fear), I had a realization: what if I could end these dreams?

There's not enough blank space below me, or time, to reasonably convey the required history here, but to make it short, I used to be haunted by nightmares. It was a defining feature of my childhood, and an embarrassing feature of my adulthood. It was wrapped up in my journey of faith, so it came and went with my belief in anything immaterial. Until I heard, yes heard (but that's the long version), that I was not alone in my dreams. That God was with me, that He knew, and that He wanted to change things. From that point on, the dream version of me learned to speak the name of Jesus, to sing worship, and to bring light into the darkness. The dream version of me learned to call on the power of the Holy Spirit and to twist the arm of evil. The dream version of me learned that evil is less like a lion, and more like a mouse and learned that awe and fear are reserved for God alone: His goodness, glory, and mercy.

So, the realization was simple: couldn't a wave be told to go away, in the name of Jesus? And while I realized this in waking, I wrote it down. I committed in words that I would give this thing a shot, and I prayed for God to help me out. Within three days (give or take), the dream came with the wave. Within moments of it rising up to terrorize, dream me called on the name of Jesus and watched the wave fall and crash in the opposite direction, spreading out until the flattened horizon could be seen again. But there, off in the distance, an ugly thing rose up from the water's surface: an ugly, dark, spiritual thing.

Now, the dreams are gone.

I remember how ecstatic I felt, and how I experienced this sense of intimacy with my God: my friend and Father. He helped me out. And as juvenile as these words might sound, I thought He was so cool. He made me feel strong in the presence of a "thing" that stole so much peace in my life. This "thing" had returned from my childhood, cloaked in a wave, and God showed up to call it for what it was and put it back into its place: not my life.

Having just read Luke, though, I'm reminded that my rejoicing need not be in this story of the wave, or the story of dreams that used to be. I am praying right now that God would give me the wisdom and peace to rejoice in dreams that await: dreams of my name written in heaven, or our names written in heaven (which sounds even better). What does that even mean to have our names written there? I ask with a sense of wonder, not confusion. I am fine not knowing, yet.