Dream Diary - Money and Books

From Wednesday night:

I dreamed I was in Gibbon walking down Labarre Street, which is the main street in Gibbon. I was walking toward the railroad tracks and when I reached Front Street, I turned the corner to the left. There, scattered all over the sidewalk, were piles and piles of coins. It was mostly pennies, but there was some silver mixed in too. I started going through the coins, leaving the pennies, but picking up the quarters, dimes, and nickels.

The longer I picked through the coins, the more I began to find other things.. First, I started noticing coins which appeared to be foreign. They had strange markings on them and some had unusual shapes. I remember one in particular; it was similar to the gold presidential dollars they started minting a few years ago, but had rounded shapes around the edge. It was kind of like a child’s drawing of a flower. Then I started finding what appeared to be bars of gold. They were kind of long and thin.

The dream shifted a little here, and I was inside somewhere, I don’t know where. My friend Bob Johnson was there. I showed him the gold bars and asked him if he thought they were real. He took one and tore the end off of it, then turned it up to his mouth and poured out some kind of powdery candy. I tried one myself and it was a little bit like those old Flav-R-Straws. Or Pixie Sticks. They were called Pixie Sticks when I was a kid. Anyway, the gold bars were fake, like those chocolate coins they always have at Halloween, only with powder inside them.

I continued digging through the pile of coins, only now it was mostly junk instead of coins. I found a long spool with pieces of wire wrapped around it. I thought the wires were guitar strings. Bob plays the guitar, so I gave them to him and asked if he could use them. He unrolled one from the spool and stretched it between his hands. When he pulled on it it broke pretty easily, indicating that they were not really guitar strings.

The dream shifted again slightly. I was in the same place, but the room had become kind of long and narrow. One end of the room had bookshelves on all three walls that went all the way to the ceiling which was quite high. I was looking at some of the books that were high up on one shelf, when all of the books on that wall began to fall. I quickly turned to the shelves that were at my back, and as the books showered down on me I tried to climb up the opposite wall. I was afraid of being buried under all those books and wanted to climb to get above them.

That’s all I remember. Actually that’s quite a bit more than I usually remember of any one dream. Money and books, books and money. Money usually represents greed, and books would seem to represent knowledge, but it was the books that buried me. Or that I feared would bury me. Maybe it means that if I keep reading books and writing book reviews I will make money from them. Or maybe it means if I keep wasting my time on all those books instead of doing what I am supposed to be doing, they will be my doom. Maybe it means nothing at all. I wonder about that part where the gold bars were not what they seemed, and ditto the guitar strings. And it was my friend Bob who revealed both. Interesting.

I think that God tries to speak to us through our dreams sometimes, but I don’t believe all dreams come from Him. How do you tell the difference? Maybe some people can. Maybe it’s just another one of those mysteries that we are not really meant to understand. So many mysteries.

Proverbs 2:10-11 For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.

Proverbs 8:10-11 Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Heavy Heart

So here it is, 1 o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep. Again. This has been going on for several nights now. I have asthma and it’s been acting up pretty bad lately. It’s harder to breathe lying down so for a few nights I was sleeping in shifts of a couple hours at a time. My asthma has been a little better lately though, and I’ve been able to lie down much better. I still can’t sleep though, ecause I just have too much on my mind.

What’s on my mind? Well, I suppose I should back up a little and explain this properly.

I’ve already talked about some of this. I went blind a while back and have been drawing social security. The payments I’m getting are barely enough to pay our bills, but the government says I’m earning too much to get Medicaid. Medicare is out also because I have to be disabled for two years before I qualify. If I had some kind of medical coverage, I could get my sight back because my problem is correctible by surgery.

Well, my mom kept telling me not to worry about that; that she would come up with the money somehow. I kept turning her down because I truly did not feel like that was what God wanted. It seemed like everytime I was tempted to take matters into my own hands and make something happen, I kept getting the message “wait.”

So, anyway, about three months ago the last of my asthma medicine ran out. I tried really hard to put my trust in God to take care of me, but to tell you the truth I was really scared about what was going to happen. In spite of my fears, when the medicine ran out, I was fine! God totally came through for me! For the next ten weeks or so, life was pretty good. I can't tell you how good it felt to be free of that medicine.

Then a couple of weeks ago, it finally caught up with me. My asthma hasn’t been that bad for about 4 years, when I ended up in the hospital for a week. I had a particularly bad evening a couple of nights ago, and I told Mom Iwas ready to take her up on her offer.

So now I face the prospect of getting some health insurance and possibly getting my sight back. Sounds like a pretty good deal. The problem is that now I’m wondering; is this what God intended, or am I trying to take matters into my own hands again? I really don’t know the answer to that, and that’s what is keeping me up at night, now that my asthma is settling down a little.

I know that God doesn’t want us to suffer. But I also know that sometimes he places challenges before us so that “the works of God should be made manifest,” just like it says in John chapter 9. So I guess the question is; has my disability brought glory to God? That’s kind of what this blog has been all about, but did it reach anyone? In my vanity, I envisioned testifying to thousands of people and converting every one of them to Christ, but of course I know it doesn’t always work that way. This whole thing may have been for one particular person out there; someone who just needed to hear someone talk about God; someone who I may never even know exists. Hmm, I need to read “The 5 People You Meet In Heaven” again.

Well, all I can do is pray about it, and hope that I am doing the right thing. It all comes down to faith. I have to have faith that God will lead me to where He wants me to be. Faith is such a small thing; such a huge thing; the only thing.

John 9:1-3 And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth. And His disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Astri's Story

**Note for screen-readers: My reader is not pronouncing Astri correctly. The spelling is A,S,T,R,I. The emphasis is on the first syllable, and the second syllable is pronounced tree, not try.

Greetings, and welcome to Drums In The Deep. You’ve come at a good time because I’m about to describe one of the most important periods of my life. A truly defining moment if ever there was one. This is Astri’s story…

Astri’s story begins in late 2003. Joni, Adam, and I had been living together for about half a year and we were struggling pretty hard. Struggling financially as we always have, but also struggling to adapt to our new lives as a family. It was October of that year that Joni discovered she was pregnant.

Now, I won’t try to describe Joni’s thoughts or feelings here because that is her story to tell, but I can give you my own perspective. I was scared. The thought of having a baby was exciting, but mostly it was scary.

First of all, what would my family think? Joni and I were not married and I worried that they would not approve. Also, how on earth were we going to afford a baby? We were barely paying the bills as it was. And would I be a good father? I already had a six year old daughter back in Nebraska that I had only seen a couple of times.

As you can see, I was really hung up on things like universal approval and money and failure. Well, without God in my life these are the kinds of things that consumed me. These are the things I thought were important. It’s sad to think about those days.

In spite of all my fear and worry, I gradually got used to the idea of having a baby. We talked about names. Joni liked the name Steven for a boy, go figure. I liked the name Astri for a girl. I was big into genealogy at the time and the nameAstri appeared several times in a Norwegian branch of my family.

Okay, fast forward to April 2004. It was a Monday and I had gone to work as usual. At around 9 or 10 that morning Joni called me and said, “I need to go to the hospital”. Oh boy, not good. Astri was not due until June. I raced home as fast as I could to pick up Joni and Adam and off we went. Adam is, and was, home-schooled if you’re wondering why he was home. The hospital was only about a mile away so that was good.

They took Joni in right away to make her comfortable while Adam and I went off to fill out paperwork. But we were all together again in time for the ultrasound. The doctor confirmed what we were already beginning to suspect. Astri was no longer living.

After that, they put Joni in a delivery room. All that was left to do was wait. They said the baby would come out naturally. They were going to make Adam wait outside when it was time but I think God had other plans. Joni gave birth very quickly and sooner than was expected. The three of us were alone in the room when it happened. Maybe you’re thinking that wasn’t a good place for an 8 year old to be, but I’m glad he can look back on that experience and say, “I was there”.

Astri Celia Brandt was born on April 26, 2004. She would have been 5 this year and starting school. She was with us for such a short time, and yet she will be with us forever. I love you Astri, and I miss you.

Mark 10:14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased and said unto them; Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.f