what dreams may come.

After Beth's comment and an email from my brother talking about evil dreams, I wanted to respond publicly.  I've been having really disturbing dreams lately.  I mean, I have always had crazy dreams for as long as I can remember, but I hardly ever have evil dreams.  Sometimes I get a little scared and I can think of a few times where I needed to wake up Aaron and have him cuddle me, but it's pretty rare.  But the past few months, my dreams have woken me up and there is no way I could go back to sleep.  Once or twice, I've been scared to even move in bed.. like not even wiggle my toes or breathe too loudly.  I know that I am surrounded by evil spirits and more than once I've seen a man's face flash before my eyes-- the same evil face.. and I know he wants to destroy me and my family.  It's been so freaky.

A few weeks ago, I was woken up and had enough courage to get out of bed and read scriptures in another room.  After some study, I searched on my phone for conference talks and articles that would comfort me.  I came across THIS TALK by Richard G. Scott and was able to relate to what he talked about evil spirits wanting to destroy his eternal family.  I LOVE when people can talk personally especially in a public environment, as he states in the beginning of his message:

"I would speak to each of you as though we were in a private conversation where we share our purest feelings, our aspirations, our hopes, and our dreams as two can do when there is mutual trust and a common basis of belief. I encourage you to write the feelings and impressions that come to you. I have prayed that the Spirit confirm to your mind and heart the essence of what I would like to communicate. "

I try to write my blog in the same format, as if I was talking to my brother or a best friend.  I realize many of you reading have ever met me in person or do not know me well, but that doesn't mean we can't have an intimate conversation. I encourage you to do the same on your own blog or in the comments below, if you feel so inclined.  I know a lot of people could benefit from the messages many have sent to me privately.  But private emails is awesome too, if you don't want to share with anyone else.

I don't want to talk about evil things so that we welcome it into our lives.  But more so that we can be aware that it is real and that evil can have a great impact on our thoughts, relationships, dreams and in our daily lives.  I can't speak for anyone else and their actions, because we have NO IDEA what others are experiencing personally and cannot say why they act or respond to certain situations the way they do.  When I think about those who deal with family dissonance, depression and suicide, I assume that Satan has more control over their thoughts than they realize.  I think he has more influence over all of us than we realize.

When I was in high school, my younger brother would wake up possessed with something scary.  He is a very calm person so we all knew he was definitely dreaming and sleep walking.  He was a baseball player and would pretend to hit grand slams and run the bases around our living room.  It was hilarious at first, but as time went on, he would lose more and more control over his body and literally went crazy several times.  I remember one particularly freaky night when he got up and pretended to swing a baseball bat and hit home runs... then he went around our home and was swinging at family pictures-- breaking them off the walls and attacking anything he could that was precious to our family and home.  My brothers had to hold him down while my dad gave him a blessing and even after that, he was fighting it and squirming to hurt us.  To this day, he doesn't remember anything about those experiences.

I also have several memories of my siblings having scary dreams, so evil they wouldn't be able to talk about them or explain what was going on.  This was foreign to me because I hardly ever felt evil, in my dreams or in life.  As I explained in earlier posts, I know that Satan influences me through thoughts that I believe to be my own.  They are actual voices that run through my mind and contradict how I feel or what I believe or know to be true.  And they have been so convincing.

I believe I wrote about this earlier and even explained this dream over the pulpit in a talk, but this was a dream a had a few years ago and it's had a significant effect on the way I parent and what I allow into my home.

I dreamed I was having a party.  My house (that I currently live in on Torino Ave in Las Vegas) was full of family and friends.  There was hardly any walking room because so many people were inside and mingling happily with each other.  The doorbell kept ringing and I continued to invite people into my home.  There was lots of delicious food and drinks being passed out and I remember holding a tray of appetizers as I went around hugging and talking to guests.  After some time, my doorbell rang again and a man stood outside.  I did not recognize him, and knew immediately that he was not a good person.  But he seemed to know others inside my home and I didn't want to seem rude..  So I reluctantly opened my door and allowed him to come inside.   

I felt sick to my stomach as soon as he entered and kept a close eye on him because I was afraid of what he might do or say to my loved ones.  Time passed, and more people entered, and more space grew between me and this man.  He knew where I was and he knew that I was watching him.  But he saw his opening, when I was too far away to stop what he was doing.  In an instant, he grabbed my son Luke by the collar, picked him up and ran into my guest room down the hall.  He locked the door and I knew he was harming him inside that room.  I ran as fast as I could after them and screamed out for everyone to help.  I grabbed a hatchet from my garage and was frantically knocking down the door when I woke up in a cold sweat.   

It was a terrifying dream.  And I stayed awake all night pondering what it meant to me and for my family.  God inspired me that night to know (for certain) that no video games or television programs would enter my home.  Extreme, yes.  But it was a clear answer that media needed to be perfectly monitored and just because others invited it into their home didn't mean it was okay for me to invite it in.  To this day, we do not have any digital screens.  No ipads or technical devices and very limited computer time (rare homeschool searches that are monitored by all the children for a specific purpose.)  You could call me a nazi media mom and that's okay..  it just happens to be something that I know my family shouldn't be affected by right now.  I am not sure if or when I will ever introduce it, but it's something I pray about often.  I don't think it's necessarily pornography or games or other addictions that are evil, but I know that I was warned to monitor it closely in my own home.  We just can't have the kind of environment we need to raise responsible, loving, attentive children with free screen time.  And my children know exactly why I won't let it in.  I just care about them too much to let them do whatever they want.

That dream was several years ago, but my dreams recently have been about my girls.  I continue to dream about the death of my daughters.  I can't count how many times I have dreamed that my girls have died together and I have buried them in the same casket.  These are devastating dreams, but they are almost always followed by a sense of peace and comfort.  And they usually make me feel so grateful for their sweet spirits in our home.  A couple of times after dreaming about their burial, I will go and get them out of their beds and cuddle with them in mine.  Aaron has woken up so many times to a little girl in between us and he never asks any questions.  I've woken him up several times asking for his opinion and advice on what I should do or how I should respond.  Neither of us have really received any direction in this area (yet) but I feel that God is trying to tell me something... and I do know that I have felt so grateful for each day I have with my family.

Okay so this dream is kind of crazy, but I just told my friend Jane about it and now I feel like documenting it.  I have NO IDEA what it means, but I think the way we feel about a dream is more important than the content itself.  anway, last week I had a dream that Aaron cheated on me and got another woman pregnant.  This is what I can remember.

The dream started out with me talking to a dear friend, who also happened to be Michelle Money from the Bachelor.  (no I didn't watch this summer's bachelor in paradise, but I hear she was the star... I never really liked her in Brad's season or the Pad, but I really liked her in my dream.) Anyway, we were together talking about life and she mentioned that she was expecting a baby.  I was so surprised because she wasn't married and wasn't dating anyone.  I asked her if she knew who the father was, and she broke down in tears, telling me that she had slept with my husband.  I didn't believe her at first and told her that I needed to talk to Aaron alone.  

Aaron and I sat down to talk and I told him this crazy conversation that Michelle claimed she was expecting his baby.  Aaron got very quiet and told me that it was true.  That they had been together more than once and that he was sorry.  I was heartbroken and couldn't understand, but he was sincere in his apology and told me that he also had an alcohol problem... shocker!  Immediately, I saw him in a new light.  In my real life, my husband can do no wrong... but in my dream, I realized that he has weaknesses and I need to take him off the pedestal I put him on and see him as a fallen soul.  My world was shattered, but so was his, so we decided to work it out and stick together no matter what.  I truly felt so much compassion for this man.  Of course, I was disappointed, but I also knew that I loved him enough to stand by him.

After my conversation, I went back to Michelle and told her that I knew everything and that I felt compassion for her too and I would help her do whatever she needed.  She started sobbing and told me that she was terminally ill and was going to die.  Both of us sobbed together and she laid down in her bed and I prepared it for some kind of transformation she was about to undergo.  It doesn't make sense now, but it made perfect sense in my dream.  I wrapped her up in a brown silky cloth and she closed her eyes.  The next day she had transformed into a beautiful (small) bat.  I opened up her bed and she spread her wings and showed me that even though her transformation was successful and complete, her wing was badly wounded and she would still die.  I felt so much sorrow for her and tried everything I could do to bandage her wing and help her learn to fly again.  But it was no use.  She was still expecting and she would not live to care for her baby-- which now turned out to be several baby bats.  

The morning her babies were born, she passed away.  I gathered her baby bats in a shoe box and tried to comfort them the best I could.  I padded the box and tried to bottle feed them with one of Roma's miniature bottles.  None of my other children were present, but Aaron was there and was also trying to help me care for the baby bats he fathered..  Soon they were hungry and crying for their mama and I started to panic.  I didn't know how to care for them and there was no one around that could tell me how to take care of bats!  They were so cute and helpless and kept squeaking at me.  I frantically started searching the internet for things to feed them or ways to help them grow into full-functioning adult bats.  Everything I read that they needed was a foreign object.  I didn't know what the food was or where to buy it, so I raided my own fridge and cupboards and found foods and liquids that they could eat.  They warmed up to me and started taking the food and I felt so relieved and encouraged as I cared for these sweet little (creepy) creatures.  They grew to love me as much as I loved them and I told them stories of their beautiful mother bat and her long eyelashes and sparkly lips.  I sang them songs and gave them each their own special brown silky beds as I tucked them into bed each night.  Aaron helped them too and we grew closer in our adventure of raising this litter of baby bats together.

I woke up feeling so warm and compassionate.  I felt tender feelings toward Aaron, his pretty mistress and to these wonderful little creatures that found a way into my heart.  As I lay in bed, I laughed thinking about how I just recreated Charlotte's Web in a twisted love affair with my husband's infidelity, but really it was a rather sweet dream.  I don't know if it has any symbolism for me in my life but I do have a deep desire to adopt children who are less fortunate and don't have warm homes to grow up in.  Part of me has a fear that I won't be able to care for them as much as their own mother's would, but this dream gave me confidence that I would do everything in my power to find the right way to raise someone else's child, even if what they need is very different than what my own children need.  I have no idea why they turned into BATS or what that would symbolize (if anything) but they really were such adorable little creatures, with their fangs and bug eyes and stretched out wings.  I loved them like my own!  Weird dream for sure, but it happened just a few days ago and I thought it was significant enough to document.  

Okay, my real kids need to be tucked into bed.  Until next time, blogger.