transparency

I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that felt incredibly significant. Dreams and visions are not ways in which God "normally" speaks to me; I actually very rarely remember my dreams, so when I do, I pay attention. Sometimes they're just psychotic - like the dream I had about a month ago in which I actually met Rachel, and we were driving around in Maine in a red convertible (it was summer), and we rescued Kirk Cameron (who was not drowning at all) from a man-made catch-and-release fishing pond. Fun dream, no idea where that came from, probably not worth much more than a laugh. But some dreams just seem to make a little more sense than their basic plot.

In this particular dream, I was at some sort of a party with a number of people I knew, and we had just come into the kitchen to get dinner. I was toward the tail end of the line, standing and chatting idly with the people around me, when our pastor came up behind me, put his hand on my back, and began to pray in another language. This warm heat spread over my back, and when he stopped praying, it didn't hurt anymore. (I wrenched it in real life a couple of months ago, and it's still kind of bugging me a bit.) In my dream, I just kind of looked at him, and I said, "how did you know?" and he just smiled compassionately and said, "Hap, why didn't you tell anybody?" And then I woke up.

You know, I don't know why I didn't tell anybody. It's not like prayer would hurt - in fact, it would probably help. (And my back is getting better.) But this dream has me thinking about transparency. It's something our pastor says quite frequently when someone shares something personal - "thanks for being so transparent" - and my general response to that, at least internally, is usually, "well, what else would I be?" Transparency is truthful; it's honest; and those are things I generally try to be... but talking with a friend about this the other day, she said, "oh, no, Hap - you can keep to yourself pretty well when you want to." And I realized she was right.

I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. It might be a little of both. Still working it out. And still trying to figure out what, if anything else, is significant about that dream....