Category: dream

23.6.23: In my dreams

Ruth Kirk
A photo of the icon in my bedroom: Jesus Christ Pantocrator.

This prayer came to me at bedtime last Wednesday evening, when I was saying goodnight before my icon of Jesus:

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
(Psalm 23:4; NIV).

1. Even in my dreams you’re with me:
All around me and within.

2. Even in my dreams you love me, Lord,
Protecting me from sin.

3. Even in my dreams you teach me:
Always walking by my side;

4. Even in my dreams you help me:
Lord, my Shepherd, and my guide.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
(Psalm 23:3; NIV).

I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
(Psalm 3:5; NIV).

References

Verse 1: If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there! (Psalm 139:8; NKJV).

You, O LORD, are a shield around me (Psalm 3:3; NLT).

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all (Ephesians 4:5-6; NLT).

Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us (Colossians 3:11; NLT).

Verse 2: Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-9; NLT).

Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me (Psalm 23:4; NLT).

Verse 3: Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29; NLT).

He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds (Job 33:15; NLT).

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me (Psalm 23:4; NLT).

Verse 4: The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me (Psalm 28:7; NIV).

The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need (Psalm 23:1; NLT).

I am the good shepherd (John 10:11; NIV).

4.5.23: A remarkable dream 

Ruth Kirk
John Martin – Feeding the Five Thousand – B1977.14.4260 – Yale Center for British Art. Wikimedia Commons.

Regular readers will know about my childhood, but for those who don’t, here is a link to a blog which summarises it: https://wp.me/p45bCr-dTm.

While I was lying in my bed, this is what I dreamed… (Daniel 4:10; NLT).

Last night I dreamed that my mother and I were in charge of catering for group of 15-20 adults and children. One day we completely forgot to discuss what to make for their dinner. 

While everyone was out for the afternoon, I tried to make some scones as a surprise for them when they came in. However, I couldn’t find the recipe I was looking for, and everything I tried to do went wrong.

Long before I expected them, the group returned, hungry, and eager for their evening meal. Realising with horror that my mother and I had forgotten all about it, I searched around for some biscuits and leftovers to keep them going. However, what I found was clearly inadequate; I felt ashamed as I offered it around. There wasn’t even any butter or jam to make the stale, dry food a little more palatable.

When my mother appeared, she quickly grasped the situation, went to the kitchen, and started cooking, though we had very few ingredients available, and no meat. Meanwhile, I spent time with our guests.

Eventually she served them with small portions of plain boiled vegetables. The recipients looked very disappointed. It was a woefully inadequate meal, and we both knew it. I expected my mother to be furious with me, but to my utter astonishment, she didn’t dump the blame on me for our joint mistake. We shared our failure without a word of recrimination.

This dream might not sound very surprising to other people, but was very remarkable for me, because nothing remotely like it ever happened while my mother was alive. In fact, throughout my 70 years of life, it was by far the most positive dream I’ve ever had about her.

It’s a long time since my mother died, but I’m starting to wonder if God is slowly moving me towards healing, one dream at a time…

Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15; NLT). 

28.4.23: Honest prayer #1

Ruth Kirk
Studies of a woman praying, by Ludwig Emil Grimm, Creative Commons.

Today’s blog is the first in a series of three, each of which considers the vital importance of honesty in prayer.

Honesty

The Bible makes it plain that God wants us to be completely honest in prayer, rather than trying to offer a sanitised, partial, or censored version of ourselves as we think God wants us to be: 

You desire honesty from the womb (Psalm 51:6; NLT).

Personally, I find it a relief to share everything with God, including my sins, and the shadow parts of myself I would rather keep hidden, or whose existence I would prefer to ignore or deny. Although sharing all this can be painful, it is vital for my ongoing process of inner healing. 

For me, prayer means living in awareness of God’s constant presence, listening, learning, and sharing with God all I experience, feel, think, say and do. This is a relationship in which self-censorship, pretence, concealment and denial are pointless, as God already knows everything about me:

Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely (Psalm 139:4; NIV).

O LORD, you have examined my heart and know everything about me (Psalm 139:1; NLT).

I therefore want my communion with God to be constant, spontaneous, immediate, heartfelt, direct and raw. This requires continuous awareness of what is going on in my shadow, as well as in my more “public” face.

My shadow

Long experience has shown me that when I don’t acknowledge, and deal with, the contents of my shadow, they make their presence felt through unbidden thoughts and impulses, anxiety, dread, panic attacks, depression and bad dreams.

Paying conscious attention to these aspect of myself and exploring their underlying causes helps me to connect with them more fully. This enables me to pray about them, and take action to resolve them. For example, if I remember an unconfessed sin, I can confess it in prayer, then try to make amends by following Jesus’ teaching:

If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift (Matthew 5:23-4; NIV). 

Looking ahead

Tomorrow I plan to publish the second part of this series on honest prayer. It will look at Jesus’ shadow, and how he dealt with it. Meanwhile, let’s end with a short reading:

A reading: Psalm 66:16-20; NLT

Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he did for me. For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw his unfailing love from me.

6.4.23: A dream of God

Ruth Kirk
Zamora – Museo Baltasar Lobo, Wikimedia.

This prayer came to me yesterday, when I had to get up early for a hospital appointment. It was difficult to write, but finally came together during the afternoon, as I slept and woke repeatedly:

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul (Psalm 25:1; ESV). 

Prayer is like a dream of God –
Absorbed by love which never ends,

By truth and light; by strength and fire;
By peace, to which my soul ascends.

Prayer is like a dream of God –
At one, in love which never dims,

And so, with childlike trust, I praise
The Lamb, who takes away my sins.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29; CSB).

References 

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them (1 John 4:16; NLT).

He loves us with unfailing love; the LORD’s faithfulness endures forever. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 117:2; NLT).

The Spirit is truth (1 John 5:6; NKJV).

God is light (1 John 1:5; NLT).

The Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength (Isaiah 26:4; KJV).

The Lord your God is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24; NIV).

The Lord is peace (Judges 6:24; NLT).

Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it (Luke 18:17; NIV). 

I praise the Lord (Psalm 56:10; NLT).

He forgives all my sins (Psalm 103:3; NLT).

5.4.23: A dream of love

Ruth Kirk
Image by Timeastor, Wikimedia.

Whilst praying, the morning after writing yesterday’s blog (see https://wp.me/p45bCr-dKZ), I experienced God in a way that was completely new to me. It proved very difficult to express in words afterwards, but I’ve done my best:

This prayer
Is like a dream of love

Beyond this world
And all I know;

A dream in which
The truth is all,

Where mercy
And forgiveness reign

In God, beyond my guilt
And shame;

Beyond my life,
Beyond my death:

One mind, one heart,
One soul, one breath.

The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7; KJV).

Reference

The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life (Job 33:4; KJV).

The life of every living thing is in his hand, and the breath of every human being (Job 12:10; NLT).

The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7; NIV).

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all (Ephesians 4:4-6; NLT).

You also are complete through your union with Christ (Colossians 2:10; NLT).

A reading from Philippians 3:8-11; NLT.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.

I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

31.3.23: A dream of unconditional love

Ruth Kirk

Introduction

For several weeks I have been living with a constant, painful sense of dread, which began after a particularly disturbing dream. Last Wednesday I talked this over with a wise, spiritual woman. All that day, I had a headache, which progressed to a migraine by bedtime, leading to a very disturbed night. Early next morning I had a vivid dream about my father, which is a very rare occurrence for me, as we were never close. I have no memories of him asking me about myself, touching, kissing, or embracing me.

The dream

In the dream, my father and I were standing next to a car in a country park. Within the park there was a sports centre, built on top of a steep hill. He wanted to walk there, whereas I needed to continue in the car, as I wasn’t strong enough to climb the hill. We therefore agreed to split up, meeting again shortly at the centre.

The car took me quickly up the hill, but my father didn’t arrive as expected, and I gradually became more and more concerned about him. Aware that he had already suffered two heart attacks, I feared he might have had a third on the hill, and be lying somewhere needing help, or even dead.

Then, at last, he arrived. We hugged tightly for a long time, sharing a deep, reciprocal closeness. While we were hugging, he kept murmuring in my ear gently, quietly and comfortingly. Although I can’t remember what he said, his words and tone of voice were soothing and reassuring.

In the dream, I knew that my mother was dead, but as the hug continued, I felt for the first time ever that this man was my father and my mother, all at once. It was an entirely novel sensation for me, both physically and emotionally. I also experienced love for him, and because of the way he was holding me I was confident that he loved me, too. During our hug I felt safe, loved, satisfied and complete.

Waking up

After waking up, I realised that my dream had given me a first, brief glimpse of God’s unconditional love. This left me stunned. It’s something I have known about intellectually for a long time, but I haven’t truly experienced it before this dream.

As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother (Julian of Norwich).

He loves us with unfailing love; the LORD‘s faithfulness endures forever. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 117:2; NLT).

28.2.23: A dream

Ruth Kirk

This what I dreamed today, early in the morning:

I was stressed, anxious, exhausted and alone. It was getting dark, and I was running out of energy in a big city, where I couldn’t find my hotel. The friend I had been with earlier had left me. 

Then I stumbled across an Orthodox service taking place in a large, crypt-like cave which was half underground. I glimpsed many priests inside, standing in rows, wearing beautiful robes.

There were a few casual onlookers outside the crypt. Close by was a long, high wall with a large, stone bas-relief of an icon. I walked past the icon, not immediately realising what it was, but as soon as it registered in my mind, I stepped back a pace or two, and stood in front of it. There, I made the sign of the cross in the Orthodox manner, just as I do when awake.

Then I woke very suddenly, experiencing a moment of pure joy, because I had been a Christian in my dream, just as I have so often asked in prayer (see https://wp.me/p45bCr-dov). Next, I quickly noted down everything that had happened, before it began to fade.

When this was done, I started to pray, giving all the experiences and emotions of my dream to God. However, in a flash, I realised that I wasn’t just giving them to God, who already knew all about them, and had sent them. Rather, I was sharing them with God.

Then I grasped that my dream had given me an opportunity to share through first-hand experience just a little of what Jesus experienced and felt at different times during his life on earth. This left me stunned, and, as so often, wondering what might come next.

23.2.23: Feeling unacceptable

Ruth Kirk

Introduction
The day before yesterday, as soon as I woke, I wrote down the emotions crowding that night’s dream. For the first time in years, this included some positive feelings alongside the usual negatives, although this blog will mainly focus on the negatives:

Negatives: Feeling unacceptable, disliked, rejected, ashamed, unloved, unlovable, a failure, vulnerable, insecure.

Positives: Briefly feeling wanted, joyful, loving, connected with a person, connected with an animal.

A learning opportunity
Dreams are a learning opportunity. Writing down the emotions they generate enables me to connect with aspects of myself it would be much more comfortable to ignore, deny, or suppress.

As I began to pray, I saw that the emotions experienced during my dream were showing me how I feel about myself. Then I understood that throughout my life a lot of my waking behaviour and sense of self have been driven by the negative emotions listed above.

The origins of my fear and insecurity 
The feelings I typically experience during dreams have their origins in my relationship with my mother. As a child, I had no way of understanding them or putting them into words. I instinctively concealed them, because expressing them in any way risked incurring my mother’s criticism, anger and punishment. It was made crystal clear that I was a burden, so, unsurprisingly, I grew up feeling deeply unacceptable to others.

However, I couldn’t hide the effect this had on me. My distress was revealed by behaviours I couldn’t control, including tears, anxiety, fears, lack of confidence, recurrent nightmares, headaches, stress, perfectionism, bed-wetting and sleepwalking.

As I got older, the origin of my fears was buried far beyond conscious awareness. However, my damaged sense of self continued to fester in my unconscious mind, surfacing as panic attacks which seemed to come out of the blue. Anxiety, agoraphobia, claustrophobia and depression went on to dominate my life for many years, until I eventually started to get effective help.

My emotional framework
I see now that all my dreams essentially reveal how I have come to feel about myself as a result of how I was treated as a child. My negative experiences formed the foundation of my adult self-image.

However, alongside this realisation I’m beginning to glimpse that perhaps my feelings about myself don’t actually belong to me at all; they may simply be how I was made to feel when I was young. Hopefully, more will be revealed in the coming days.

Positive emotions
Meanwhile, I haven’t forgotten those rare, positive emotions experienced during my dream. These have given me hope that if my unconscious mind, and therefore my dreams, can change, perhaps my conscious sense of who and what I am can change as well.

So, after that long introduction, here is today’s prayer:

Give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18; NIV). 

Thank  you, Lord God,
With all my heart,
For the secret riches
You give me
From the darkness
Of my unconscious mind.

Through Jesus’ name.
Amen.

I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness – secret riches (Isaiah 45:3; NLT). 

12.2.23: Attitude

Ruth Kirk

What a difference our attitude makes to how we respond to all God sends. As Saint Paul says: “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” (Philippians 2:5; NLT).

Last night I dreamed I was very ill. It was clear that I was dying, and that this was beyond my control, and beyond any possibility of medical intervention.

In my dream, I was aware that my attitude to death would make a huge difference to how I experienced it. I could accept what was happening, facing it willingly and putting my trust in God. Alternatively, I could resent it, get angry, and feel bitter, or afraid, even blaming God. However, no matter how I approached it, death was still inevitable.

It was a very vivid dream, and I laid awake for a long time afterwards. Eventually I gave up hoping to go back to sleep, so I sat up in bed with a hot drink, and began to pray. To my surprise, as soon as I had said the Lord’s Prayer, today’s blog began to arrive:

In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44; NET).

I’m hot. I’m cold.
I’m restless. I can’t sleep.

Into my mind, Lord,
Doubts and questions creep:

Can I face all that’s coming
Without fear?

Yahweh, I know I can’t,
But you are here

To help me bear
Whatever you may send:

My Lord, my God,
My Comforter, and Friend.

Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God (Romans 5:11; NLT).

References

I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things (Isaiah 45:7; NLT).

The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. Blessed be the name of the LORD (Job 1:21; CSB). 

The LORD gives both death and life (I Samuel 2:6; NLT). 

He …became anguished and distressed (Matthew 26:37; NET).

Look – the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners (Matthew 26:45; NLT).

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me (Psalm 23:4; KJV).

I want your will to be done, not mine (Mark 14:36; NLT).

He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever (John 14:16; KJV).

10.2.23: A healing dream

Ruth Kirk

The moment I began to pray before my icon of Mary yesterday morning, I saw the overall theme of the dream from which I had just woken. It was truly astonishing, because during this dream, I had liked my mother.

This may not sound very significant, but it was a first for me. During the dream, I wasn’t afraid of her. I was able to compliment her on her appearance, and give her some direct feedback. It was extraordinary to feel comfortable about being around her.

None of these things ever happened during her lifetime because I was afraid of her. I hated being with her, and loathed her touch and the sound of her voice. I took care to avoid her as far as possible.

Over the years I have had many nightmares about my mother – horrible dreams in which I’ve tried to stand up to her and woken up shouting. However, in last night’s dream I actually enjoyed her company.

In real life, I never loved or trusted my mother, but this dream gave me my first ever glimpse of what a much healthier mother/daughter relationship might feel like. So, I’m going to hold on to the mother I spent time with in my dream: a smart, trim, approachable woman in a fitted, green, woollen suit, wearing red lipstick; a woman who willingly contributed to a community event in an official capacity; chatty, relaxed, and able to accept honest feedback.

As I reflected on my dream, it felt strangely healing, as if a lifetime of emotional suffering and mental illness could somehow be redeemed by a single, brief, positive experience.

I thanked God for giving me this dream about what my mother could have become if her own life had been different, for having dreamed about having a good relationship with her, and especially for the brief, precious experience of liking her.