Dec. 22: Dreams and nightmares

 So I had this dream that my friend Kat got to play left field for the Toronto Blue Jays. She was the only woman in the world who the MLB thought was good enough to play in a men's league. So Kat joined the Blue Jays and she got a whole bunch of home runs and RBIs and other great baseball stats. And then in April, she got traded to the Cleveland Guardians and she helped them win the World Series.

That would be a dream for me and my dad, and for Kat too but in the end it might be a nightmare.

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I like those dreams when you figure out you're dreaming and you try your best to take control of the dream narrative.

I had this dream once where I was on a football field that was filled with people and animals and cartoon characters. I was talking to one man who was about seven feet tall and he was wearing a red blazer and he had silver hair and glasses and he had a button on his lapel that kept changing between a moose face and a piece of cheese. I told the man that he wasn't real and I knew I was dreaming and I was going to have fun. He told me that wasn't allowed to happen. So while I set about trying to have fun - I was seventeen when I had that dream so you can probably imagine what I considered fun - a whole bunch of skunks ganged up on me and threw a potato sack over my head and started jumping on my body. Then my mom woke me up and told me to get ready for school.

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The children's author, Louis Sacher. once observed that bad dreams are better than good dreams. That is because when you wake up from a bad dream, you are relieved. When you wake up from a good one, you are disappointed.

I have dreamed of winning lotteries, getting novels published, and being able to travel through time. Life sucks when you wake up from them.

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In Bible college, a fellow student had a problem with her legs. Lots of pain. Arthritis. It was so bad that she was crying one night and we laid hands on her and prayed for her.

That night, I had a dream where an angel told me that if that girl sat in a certain rocking chair in a certain basement, she would be healed. The basement was located in another person's house. I had never been in that person's house. When I saw that person on the street the next day, I asked if they had a rocking chair in their basement.

"Yes,:I do," the person said, and looked at me quizzically.

I told the fellow student about my dream but she never sought out that rocking chair. 

I have not thought of that for nearly 30 years.

Thanks, Kat.

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