On a November Nights Dream

Did I ever tell you that as a kid I used to pray for weird dreams?

Yeah. 

I liked the crazy stories my mind would come up with during my night time reveries.  And so I would ask God to bless me with strange and crazy dreams.

I was an odd one, for sure.

I don't ask for that anymore.  And while a crazy one pops in here and there my dreams have taken on a more realistic nature as of late.  

Meaning that often, while I am dreaming, I have no idea that the things that are happening aren't real.  

Because they are so believable.

Over the past couple of years I've had some particularly troubling dreams.  Ones where I have done something things.  Bad things.  And the guilt associated with the dream is so intense that I am almost crying with relief when I wake up and realize that it was, in fact, just a dream.  

I can't say that I am fond of these dreams.  Though I do see them as warnings.  

But the dream I had last night was different.

It was a dream the likes of which I have never had before.

In it, I was going to die.

And I knew it.

I had 24 hours at the most.

There was no disease, no injury, no ailment of any kind.  Just a certainty that I was, in fact, going to die.

I know that through the course of my dream I came to some rather poignant conclusions but I can't for the life of me remember what they were.

What I DO remember was the crushing guilt and disappointment.

Not terror.

And not a fear of what came after or what would happen to me.

But a deep and terrible wish that I had: 

1. Done more with my life

2. Tried harder to be the person I know that I can be

I could not stop thinking about how I was going to miss out on so much of my life.  I wondered what was so important in the next life that God couldn't afford to keep me in this one.

And most of all, I knew deep down that I had let too much slide. I had failed to be the strong, devoted daughter of God that I knew I had to potential to be.

Was this dream also a warning?

I know I'm not going to die in the next 24 hours (boy did I just jinx myself...).

But I know that I can always be doing better.  And yet I let so much fall by the wayside.

What more should I be doing?  What can I do so that if I were going to die in 24 hours I would not feel those things I felt in my dream?

I'd take strange, crazy dreams over these frighteningly realistic ones any day.

But maybe I need these wake-up calls.