It did not go the way I was expecting it to.

A small team of us were listening carefully to a woman who wanted to understand what her dream meant. As we talked and asked her questions about the dream, she began to unpack a recent situation in her life where she had been hurt by people she looked up to in her former church. We were all clear that the dream related to that situation; the hurt was real and had gone deep. The dream showed that she was now incapacitated by that hurt, however, and living with a sense of betrayal, anger, and distrust.

This was reflected in the way she spoke as we talked; the feelings of anger and pain, caused by the situation, rose again for her. When we talked about the power of forgiveness, she was not willing to accept that this would help her move forward. She did not see why she should consider forgiving the people concerned and did not want to entertain that idea (see more on forgiveness here).

“The dream showed that she was now incapacitated by that hurt, however, and living with a sense of betrayal, anger, and distrust.“

It may not have gone the way I expected, but it confirmed for me once again the importance of paying attention to our dreams. In my view, the dream showed the dreamer that she was stuck in her pain and anger. These emotions were real and should not be ignored; paying attention to the dream would help to begin to deal with the destructive impact of the situation, in order to move forward.

There are different types of dreams and I classified her dream as a ‘soul’ dream. Soul dreams simply reveal our thoughts and feelings, whether positive or negative. In this case, the feelings were all based around hurt; disappointment, anger, fear. ‘God’ dreams, on the other hand, are God speaking to us as we sleep. They contain God’s wisdom and always contain hope. Soul dreams are common, after all our minds need to process and recover as we sleep just as our bodies need to recover and process (see more about sleep here).

We should absolutely still pay attention to soul dreams, to acknowledge how we are really feeling and, as in the case above, we can still take positive actions in response to the dream to help us move forward.

Dreams can seem insignificant and are easy to brush away. Even dreams that we clearly remember when we wake seem to quickly dissipate as we get on with our day. Paying attention to them is a choice.

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema