Nightmare Induced Thankfulness

Last night, I had a crazy dream...pretty much a nightmare. 

You should know that my most frequently recurring nightmare is one in which I somehow end up marrying someone I don't actually want to marry. And I usually have no idea how it even happened. And I just want to get out of it. But I can't. This was one such dream.

I guess it was good in some ways. So I'll start there. In the dream, I was pregnant. It might not seem immediately apparent as to why this is a good thing. This hasn't been my lifelong aspiration or anything. In fact, the whole idea of having babies kind of freaks me out. You can ask my best friend from my childhood years: she wanted to have babies, while I was content with the cuteness of baby Christmas trees. Seriously.

Recently though, I've been spending some time with two of my close friends, who are both expectant mothers. I still can't believe it in some ways, since we all just seem too young - like we're still pretty much children, ourselves. But we're not children. We're adults. 

And it can tend to feel like these friends are moving through the life stages without me - that I've been left behind. Because if I'm still single, and they're already married and starting to have kids, that means I'm trailing them by two whole life stages! In the dream, though, I had caught up to them somehow, and that's what made it good. It seemed like my friends and I were on the same page again - that we could share this experience together.

 The thing was, we weren't actually on the same page at all. In the dream, I was married, but I had gotten married secretly. So I didn't get to have the beautiful wedding that I had always dreamed of, or like those I had been to for my friends. I didn't even have an engagement ring. I don't think my husband even had a job. And I wasn't married to a godly, Christian man like my friends were. I had chosen to marry a non-Christian. That's why the marriage was a secret. And that's why the dream was a nightmare.

The happy feeling of being in the same life stage as my friends totally faded away. All I could think of was, "How do I get out of this? I can't get out of this! My life is ruined! This really isn't the person that I wanted to marry! And now I'm pregnant... My dreams for my life are totally crushed. How did I even get myself into this situation? And how did I manage to do all this in secret, without anyone stopping me? How is it possible that I could make such terrible, life-altering decisions?"

Suddenly, I woke up. I realized that I hadn't, in fact, ruined my life. I wasn't married. I wasn't pregnant. My nightmare was not my present reality. And in many ways, the dream left me strangely thankful for the major decisions I had already made in life, though they have led me to a life stage that is different than that of my close friends. Sure, I may not be in the same life stage as those friends now, but that's ok. I can still be friends with them! Plus, I get to see what they do and learn from their mistakes :) 

I'm also thankful that though I was headed in the direction of making this nightmare into a reality, God intervened in my life! All by His own power, He called me out of my foolishness, shame, weakness, lowliness, and made me His own (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). He got my attention and showed me that Jesus was much more valuable than all the other things I had been pursuing. He even showed me that on the cross, Jesus took on my worst nightmare so that I would never have to face it! He put me in a community of people who care about me enough to ask me hard questions, who challenge me when I'm stubbornly clinging to my sin instead of to Jesus, who confront me when I'm thinking about making terrible, life-altering decisions. And the Lord has definitely shown me that His plans are better than mine. 

So I really don't know what God has in store for me in the future. I do know, however, that it won't be like a nightmare. And things might not go the way I would have chosen. But He has already protected me from myself and my own ridiculous plans on so many occasions. Now, I'm even starting to wonder if He gives me those nightmares sometimes in order to make me more thankful that He doesn't always let me have what I want. Because honestly, often what I think I want is actually the opposite of all the good He wants to demonstrate to me. And I would rather choose His plan than the nightmare I would come up with.

So thankful that He can rescue us from our own personal nightmares and that

Loving Him is Red!

What does it look like for you to trust Jesus as friends move on to different life stages?

How has the Lord shaped better plans for you than you tried to make for yourself?