Last night I had the strangest dream…

…I sailed away to China, in a little rowboat to find ya..(lol not really but have fun not getting THAT stuck in your head for the next week!)

I did have a dream that was 99% nightmare and 1% hope right there at the end. But that 1% might as well have been 100% by the time I awoke because of the peace that flooded my soul.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

My dream started as many of them do, as a child with my family on vacation. Somewhere in there my kids appeared as did my husband. Yet I was still fairly young. (This may be a wishful thinking kind of thing, but in my dreams I’m never over 30 and always ALWAYS skinny!)

I then went through a maze of strange, unsettling events- ones I can trace back to book plots, tv shows, movies, and even past traumas or fears. It was weird, convoluted, and no doubt an effort for my ind to dispel and displace the darkness in my mind.

At some point, I was grocery shopping and went to put my groceries in the trunk. I then went back inside, the grocery store being where Pearson’s Drugs used to be in the Alexandria Mall and I went browsing through the mall until I got to the theater. This theater was in the Muskogee, OK Mall (though it was just one big mall in my dream) and I asked the ticket taker (from the stand they used to have outside the theater in Alexandria before the actual mall was built) if I could just go watch the previews without getting a ticket. She let me in and I was greeted with the Masons handing out wands and hats like they had when they drove their little cars at the circus. I sat down and started rocking in my chair when the people behind me asked me to stop rocking.

I  assured them I’d leave before the movie started but I was offended so I moved to a different section. That’s when I saw that everyone was in costume. Turns out, the pre-preview show was going to feature Reba McEntire and dance troupes from Dancing With the Stars and all at once it hit me, I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN QUARANTINE! How could I have forgotten?!

I hurried out of the theater but realized I still had my wand and hat so I went back in and handed them to the first person I saw. (This MUST be from an altercation with a movie usher over 3-D glasses I couldn’t find post-show in 2007!)

I quickly headed to my car but I  couldn’t find it anywhere! The entire parking lot was filled with white Buicks. (This is actually a recurring thought; I never noticed how many white Buick Encores there were until I got one.)

I backtracked to the grocery store so I entered the parking lot from that angle but it was nowhere to be seen.

I went back in to the store for security assistance. I couldn’t get security to help me. They told me I hadn’t looked hard enough. (I’m probably going to attribute this scene to frantically trying to get my husband a Covid-19 test, with no luck.) I went up and down every single aisle in the entire mall parking lot and it wasn’t there.

I went back to security and they agreed to let someone search with me. We went up and down each aisle, pushing the alarm button on my key fob.

At some point I was alone again, pressing the button when the alarm went off in a white van.

I knew instantly that my car had been stolen and was already chopped up for parts and put into this van. The guy standing by the van (arms dealer?) realized what was happening and he and three other heavily armored men came over to me.

While this dream may sound weird and slightly funny, in that moment it was terrifying. I knew it had something to do with the Coronavirus but it also had tinges of Bumblebee, the Transformers movie I’d watched with my grandkids. I was a threat and the target. And I was getting killed. Blow after blow I took, a gunshot wound to my chest. I was lying on the ground in pain, terrified, when I looked up.

And all I could see was Jesus.

I started singing hymns and I never took my eyes of Him. I briefly wondered if that would make them stop, make them retreat. But it didn’t. Or maybe it did.

I don’t know because I never took my eyes off Jesus. Whether they finished me off or left me to die, whether I succumbed to my injuries or whether I was healed, it didn’t matter. I felt nothing but His love. I saw nothing but His light. I worried about nothing but praising Him.

I woke up right after that, my head a little fuzzy but the message clear: No matter what I’m going through, be it now in the midst of the pandemic or later with another struggle, I will be just fine if I keep my focus on Him.