“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” -Luke 12:24-25 (NRSV)
I’ve been through a rough patch of bad dreams this winter. Most have been memorable enough to bug me the next morning, and in a few instances, I’ve been awoken directly from the dream and disturbed enough to not be able to get back to sleep (I’ve since read that this is what constitutes a “nightmare”). There was a period of a week or so in which I was nervous in the evening, fearing what would be coming up at some point in the night. I searched out a solution, and found that a number of people recommend “teaching” your mind to “fix” a bad dream in real-time. Here’s how it works: In the morning when you are still disturbed by the dream, you try to repair it, changing the ending to something less traumatic, even comical. An example I read detailed a person who woke from a dream in which she was tossed into the ocean, fearing for her life from drowning. She amended that dream to make the water only a few inches deep. Over time, I read, you begin to control the dreams as they happen. I managed to do this once a few nights ago, and I felt like a super-hero the next day. I’d veered myself out of that full-day funk.
God, too often I forget to turn to you in times of struggle and frustration. Help me to remember you as part of my daily conversation, and teach me to reach for you both in daylight and when I cry out at night.