This and That in meh...

Dad spoke about resisting temptation, healing, and refocusing and staying focused.

I sat in the pew and listened and I agree with what he was saying. For all the faults my father has, he speaks truth even if he doesn’t entirely live his truth. I had a dream a while back. Sitting in church a few weeks ago, I realized the church I dreamed about was this very one. The red carpet. The tan wood of the pews. I have a lot of dreams. Not all of them are prophetic, but some of them are. I don’t have the gift of deciphering the dreams. Only the ones when someone is pregnant. I see fish, even in weird places, colorful in a toilet bowl or in their tank.

This dream about my dad’s church, after talking to a friend who interprets dreams, was not a good one from what she told me. The church looked as I have explained, except there were these red curtains hanging down, covering the walls. There was a fire…not a fire…(forgive me, but it’s been a while since I’ve had this dream) I was hiding behind the curtains for some reason. The curtains did catch fire, like someone was standing with a torch and going around the room. I was running under the curtains to escape the fire. Once I was out from under curtains, I ran for the door. I can’t quite remember, but there was a bit of struggle for me to get to the doors. I somehow ended up in a hallway that lead to the outside. Once outside, it was like the dream morphed into me and my dad walking down the street from my old apartment. There were some people on one side of the street selling something like a flea market of some sort. Dad and I were walking and talking and it was like he was consoling me about something.

My friend said that red inside of a church is never good and fire is even worse. She said that something may be happening, or could happen that he is trying to shield me from. I can’t think of him trying to shield me from anything. While we are kind of close, one must remember I didn’t really grow up with him in my life. I’ve always known who he was. I never spent the night at his house. We are okay, but I still don’t think there is anything that he would have to shield me from that I can’t shield myself from.

Curiouser and curiouser…

Always the concerned parent, I’m still thinking of my daughter. We’ve had our rough patches, but I love her fiercely. This situation with my grandson’s father pulling a gun on her has me shaken. He maybe locked up, but I can’t help but think about how I don’t want her to go out like her father’s sister that was killed. My daughter has aligned herself with some seedy characters in the name of “I think I’m grown & know what I’m doing” over her life. I don’t know how she met them or where, but me telling her to be careful and quit thinking stuff can’t happen to you she still did what she wanted. In the case of this guy, she was 15yo effing around. Sneaking out, sneaking around, doing everything she shouldn’t do, nothing she should. First, she didn’t know who fathered her child. The guy she thought was the one wasn’t, she called crying about that. I was resigned to the notion that we just won’t know. I was okay with not knowing, even though it would be difficult in later years to talk to baby about how his mother was. Then this guy pops up. Fresh out of jail, shuffling between this town and another. It’s not my monkey and not my circus, but the lives of my family was threatened. I’m glad she was fine and he was in jail. I would have called all my siblings and his ass would be dead. As much as I cherish life, I cherish my daughter and grandson more.

I haven’t shared this with anyone. This comes at a time when I’m wondering about God, wondering about aging, and feeling my mortality again, if something happens where will I be. I think I had a moment. It could be because I was talking about church, but a dear to me friend was talking to me about her faith and about something she saw about Jimmy Carter and how she wished she had experiences that some people had when it comes to God to know that he is real. She shared with me and experience that she thought was as close to one as possible. We both teared up and needed tissue. Such a girly moment. For all of my gruffness, I am really sensitive to things. But I figure this was God talking to me through her. There was also this thing I read about an atheist who was so into “I don’t believe in God” but eventually gave his life to Christ because in all the denial the fact that she was so adamant that God didn’t exist, the constant wonder, in the end, was Him dealing with her and working on her heart. So there is that to consider. I’ve been having a bunch of quasi-theological conversations of late.

Just thoughts I’m putting out there…
Take care of others…

Kindest regards,
Sister