Not just a dream. Thousands upon thousands. I figure that even if I had only one dream each night (not true), the count would be well beyond 20,000 by now. And, yes, I did the math on that. Because it’s MATH, and math is its own kind of AWESOME. I will try to convince you of that in a later post.

Oh, yes, I am a dreamer. If you and I know each other, it is highly likely that I have dreamed something about you. Friends, family, acquaintances, famous people – they all find their way into these performances my brain puts on for me nightly. Seriously! It’s like watching a sitcom or a full-length movie! The problem is that no one has a ticket to see it but me, so the enjoyment ends there. No matter how funny or strange the dream, I rarely share the details because dreams can sound ridiculous in the retelling, and, well, things can get awkward.

I don’t think my friend since fifth grade needs to hear that she showed up on my porch and begged me to take all the extra eggs her hens had laid. Does she live on a farm in real life? Does she actually raise chickens? Doubt it.

Do you think I should tell Mariah Carey that I once found her living out of my 1973 Volkswagen bug – parked in my garage?

Should I remind George W. Bush about the day he (and Laura) stopped by my house and asked me for some sweet tea and a haircut?

Do you think Oprah wants to know about the time I managed to sneak into her home and then stood there at the edge of her gigantic indoor pool waiting for her to finish swimming laps so that I could ask her to help me find my sister I’ve never met? She started saying things like “I’m calling security” and “you’re a stalker” and “don’t you dare put your legs in this water” until I finally gave up.

You see how things could get horribly awkward, right? This is why I keep my crazy dreams to myself (for the most part).

So, yes, I am a dreamer. 

There was one dream I had that has impacted my life more than any other. Hands down. 

Now, this one took place a loooooong time ago. I was a four-year-old girl living in the tiny town of Howe, Texas. My father was off fighting in Vietnam; my stepmother was left alone to care for eight children. 

Although I was only a preschooler (I doubt that word had yet been coined – I believe the more technical term was “little kid“), my perception was that my world was not all butterflies and lollipops. Although I certainly never verbalized it (nor would have been able), I felt a sense of lack with a side of sadness. I suppose there is a feeling of “not quite enough” when a family of ten must be fed and clothed on an Air Force salary, but my “side of sadness” stemmed from a different source: conversations about my mother abandoning me and my brothers were held out in the open, so I felt I wore an “unwanted, unloved” label from a very early age. I’m sure no one else picked up on this because I could easily mask it with my daily routine of being a four-year-old.

And now to that life-changing dream:

I noticed it was raining outside and oh, how my little girl self longed to run and play in the rain and jump in puddles and feel the raindrops on my face, but I also knew there was absolutely zero chance of this happening. My stepmother was on high alert at the slightest hint of bad weather, so our only option ever was to stay safely ensconced in the house once the first drops of rain appeared.

Imagine my glee when I suddenly realized no one in the family was looking my way and that I could sneak my way out into the land of soft rain and endless possibilities (again, this is a dream). My escape was a clean getaway. I knew that being outside in the rain was forbidden, but clearly, my dream self was less concerned with obedience than my real-life self.

As I danced around and splashed in every puddle I could find, I noticed something odd. Instead of huge raindrops, the round things falling from the sky were actually COINS. I could not believe our fortune! Our family had hit the jackpot! No longer would we be scrambling to make ends meet! We would finally have ENOUGH. I shouted to my siblings to come help me gather this unexpected treasure, but no one could hear me. Of course, coins piling up on the ground might help ease the household budget strain, but it wouldn’t alleviate that general sense of lack I felt. Let’s just agree that the coins were symbolic of whatever help I needed.

(If this next thing has never happened to you while dreaming, then be prepared to think, “wow, she is completely WEIRD” – I will understand)

Somehow my brain has convinced itself that while dreaming about something that I would love to have in real life, if I can just hold on to it tightly enough in the dream, then it will surely follow me over into my wide-awake world. I have had zero success with this exercise, by the way.

So in this particular dream, I collected as many coins as my tiny hands could hold and clutched them tightly in hopes of presenting them to my family. 

I think you all can see where this is going.

It didn’t work. AT ALL.

So now four-year-old Lori is fully awake (and painfully aware of her empty hands) and feeling disheartened and dejected and deflated and disappointed (yes, all the D words). 

Suddenly, I HEARD A VOICE. 

I had no idea where the voice came from and I did not recognize the voice, but I very clearly heard this voice say to me:

“Don’t worry, Lori, it’s not always going to be this way.“

I told no one of the dream. Or my disappointment. Or the voice I heard. 

And although, at the time, I couldn’t completely grasp what had happened, I have no doubt whatsoever that the tender voice I heard was none other than the voice of the God of the universe speaking hope into the heart of a little girl in a small town in Texas.

I held on to that promise through many difficult years that followed, at times clinging to it like a life raft. Trusting that one powerful sentence to be true (although the source remained a mystery to me) brought me great comfort in the midst of sometimes great sorrow.

I still marvel that the Lord God, the Creator of everything, would speak to a young girl and make sure she had a sliver of hope that she could cling to until the day she surrendered her heart to Him and found her hope and satisfaction in Him. 

Oh friend, He is there for you. He loves you perfectly. He will speak hope into your heart just as He did mine. This is my prayer – that you would hear the voice of Almighty God whispering hope and love to you in the midst of whatever pain or sadness you are enduring.