JENNY'S DREAM
It was a purple morning that had dawned with shades ranging from palest lavender to deep purple in the horizon beyond my kitchen window. I thanked my creator for the beautiful vista that graced my eyes and turned to fill my kitchen with the inviting aromas of hot coffee, sizzling bacon and love, for my family's breakfast. A soft shuffling on the ebony shale floor of my hallway told me that someone was about to make an appearance... likely my tiny, blonde daughter, "Jenny" I thought and my heart softened with the tenderness the sight of her always created in me. I looked up to greet her with a smile on my lips that quickly faded when I saw her sapphire blue eyes glistening with tears instead of glowing with her usual wonder at each new day. Thoughts of breakfast fell away as I knelt before her and gathered her into my arms, automatically inhaling her sweet morning scent as always. "What is it Honey? What is making you so sad already this morning?" I lifted her into my arms as I stood up and moved to our "shares 'r good" spot on the sofa.
"Mommy, I had a dream and it was so beautiful", she said. "Then why are you tearful?", I asked. "Because it was SOOO beautiful", she said. I asked her to tell me about it, my concern deepening as I studied this magnificent creation God had blessed my life with 8 years before... She then began to speak and the dream rolled from her as though she was 80 years old instead of 8.
She dreamed she said, that she was a time traveller and in her dream, she was 8 years old. She had seen her much older sister, at a much younger age, sitting alone in a chair and crying. She had flown to her sister to tell her that she needn't cry because she would be born and soon she would not need to feel so alone. Her sister looked up at her and said, "How could you be my younger sister if you are already older than me?" Jenny explained to her sister that she was travelling through time and had not been born yet. Wiping the tears from her sister's eyes and again, reassuring her that one day soon she would not be alone, Jenny took flight once again and landed in a supermarket. There she found a much younger version of her father with a woman she did not recognize. When he was alone for a minute, she told him that she was to be his daughter. Amazed at the sight of the little blonde girl before him, he just stood with his mouth open, saying nothing. Jenny went on to tell him that he must be at the A&W drive-in restaurant at 1:00 a.m. on a certain date in order to meet her mother so that she could be born. She left him after telling him to lose the woman he was currently with.
Then she flew to me and again, repeated that I must be at the A&W at 1:00 a.m. on a certain date to meet her father so that she could be born. She was a spirit trying to come to earth she said and she instructed me to lose the man I was with at that time. I was wearing my blue nightshirt when she visited me during her time travel and jumping from the front of the shirt, were playful dolphins who rose and fell from the blue waters of my shirt. They made her giggle as she watched them, she said.
I watched my daughter as she told me the story of her dream and I realized I was in the grip of something far bigger than anything my mortal mind had the ability to understand. There was a "presence" near us and it seemed to be urging me to listen very carefully to every word my daughter spoke and watch every tear that rolled down her cheeks as she told me her dream. Throughout the day, she returned to me time after time, to tell me of another detail she remembered. She remembered that the woman her father was with in the supermarket, had long brown hair that she wore in ringlets. Jenny had never met or known of this woman during her life. The woman her Dad dated before dating me had long brown hair and ringlets! I was literally entranced by her revelations. As I tucked Jenny into bed that night, she told me she hoped she could travel through time again that night and drifted off as the sandman called her name...
I returned to the shotgun scattering of thoughts in my own mind as I left her room. How had an 8 year old girl dreamed such a complicated and sophisticated dream that she was able to explain her being older in her appearance before her older sister? Even I had to take a few minutes to explore the time frames that would be involved in her being older than her sister in her time travel but actually younger and waiting to be born? How had she known what her Daddy's friend had looked like? Why did it make her cry tears of joy at the beautiful feelings it left within her tiny spirit? These questions I could not answer but something in me told me that there was some huge importance... a message... being carried that I should not ignore. I sat down and wrote her a letter describing the events of the day from beginning to end. Then I wrote, "I cannot tell you why you had this dream or what it meant. We know nothing of our existence before our births at this time on earth or why we are here. But if in fact, you did choose your father and I to be your parents, I can only tell you how grateful I am to God for honouring us with your presence. Maybe someday, we will know the significance of this dream but until then, I will tuck this letter into your baby book and we will talk about it again when you are older... With love always, Mom". I tucked the letter into her baby book with a huge lifting of the sense that I must DO something about the dream. The years drifted on...
When my daughter was 12 years old, I went for my normal annual medical examination and wished my doctor a good holiday in the weeks over Christmas. He informed me that if any of my test results were of concern, someone would contact me. In fairly good physical health that I had come to take for granted, I smiled and said I would see him in a month or two. Two days later, I received a call that I was to report to the doctor (on locum for my doctor) at the medical clinic without delay. I hurried to the clinic with the metallic taste of fear filling my mouth. The doctor advised me that some of my blood tests reported extremely high amounts of certain hormones in my system and that he was scheduling me for an immediate skull x-ray. I asked him why he would wish to examine my skull (not that I hadn't heard a few times in life that I could stand to have my head examined... ) but he was non-responsive and vague saying that he preferred I talk to my own doctor after the test results came back from the x-ray. I was given requisitions for further extensive blood testing and an appointment at our local hospital. While the doctor left the examination room to ask his nurse to make the appointment, I sneaked a peek at my file and in writing I could barely read, I read the words.... "pituitary tumor".
I left his office feeling very very frightened and barely able to make sense of this new development. I stopped in at the local mall, marched into the medical section of a Coles Book store and went directly to a Merck's Nursing Manual. I discovered that the pituitary gland is a pea-shaped gland that rests in a cradle of bone located underneath the brain and is the master gland of our endocrine system. The Manual said that tumors found on this gland are rare, slow to grow and generally non-cancerous. That was the good news. The bad news was that very little is known about them and when they enlarge, they wear away at the cradle of bone they sit in... Aaah, so that is what the skull x-ray was for. Such tumours have highly negative effects on the hormonal system, playing with one's moods, destroying one's sense of smell and one's libido and causing one's hair to fall out. They had also been known to press against the optic nerves and cause blindness. The surgery to correct them was gruesomely described and gave me fits of the horrors as I drove home. But I was able to resolve that I would not worry my family with the news and by the time I walked through the front door of my house, I had squared my shoulders and pasted a smile on my lips.
In the weeks that followed I went through numerous tests including the skull x-ray and a CT scan that found me strapped face down to the table in a chin cup with radioactive material flowing through my body and up to my brain. I left the hospital unable to see for almost two days and looking very much like Kermit's sister. I cried as I labelled the boxes of my Christmas ornaments for each of my children and put them away thinking that with all of the unknowns, I could not be certain I would be there to see them opened the following year.
My sister, living in another town not far from mine, came for a visit and brought me a gift that she "strongly-encouraged" me to read. It was entitled, "Embraced By The Light" and was the story of a woman who had died briefly post-surgery and visited heaven to receive God's teachings about the eternal mysteries of our lives. I had admittedly fallen away from my earlier Christian teachings and my relationship with my creator was not close prior to my annual physical examination. Busy with life, raising a family, looking after my house and working in a law firm, I had little time left to share my spirit with God.
I was upset with my sister for bringing me a book where a woman had died after surgery thinking her somewhat insensitive. The book sat on my coffee table and I dusted around it for the next three weeks without opening it. I finally told my sister I felt she was being a little insensitive in her persistently urging me to READ THE BOOK! My eyes would pass over it as I walked by it repeatedly until finally I sat down one day with coffee in one hand and the dreaded book in the other.
I didn't start at the beginning of the book. The book fell open at a certain chapter and I began to scan feeling a little cynical about anyone who would write a "spiritual treatise" for profit. But as I read... the writer described how she was taken to a place in heaven where two angels were squabbling. The angels were looking at the earth through the opening in the clouds and arguing about how they could get the two mortals they were watching to quit disliking one another. There was a spirit that needed to be born with a purpose to fulfill on earth and the two people had already met and didn't like one another. It was my daughter's dream... back in full force... at once authenticating the writer's story and begging me to return to my faith in God.
I sat in stunned silence for the rest of the afternoon. I pulled the letter I had written Jenny from her baby book and reread it time and time again... There it was... confirmation that we come to earth as spirits, unconsciously knowing our purpose here and even pre-selecting how long we will spend here before returning to our heaven.... confirmation that my daughter had indeed chosen her Dad and I to be her parents before her birth... confirmation that there is a reason why small babies die and loved ones die when we least understand it. But the most important piece of that epiphany was the feeling of beautiful peace that slowly and inexorably crept through my soul as I realized that God was, despite my ignorance toward Him, still carrying me and still loving me.
Without Jenny's dream, I would not have felt and believed what I read in the book and without the book, I would never have known the significance of my daughter's beautiful dream. Without either, I would never have returned to live a new kind of life in faith and peace.
It has now been ten years since I learned I have a tumor under my brain and I have lived many more enriching moments than I would have ever known otherwise. I take time to hug the teddy bears in the stores, to hold my beautiful grandsons and gently touch their velvety faces, to breathe in the scent of the spring lilacs with all the vigor my olfactory senses can muster and best of all, to remember that everything that happens here on earth has a reason, whether I understand it or not.
This was my "strangest thing", my gift, my honour and the miracle of God's love in my life... Thank you for the opportunity to share it with you.
With love and abiding faith always,
Silken