I Had A Dream...

Last Saturday a friend woke up sobbing. She had a dream...

She and her husband and daughter were going somewhere. It was a cool, overcast day. They arrived in a parking garage near a fast-moving river. They walked to the adjacent building, laughing and talking.

When they went in, they found in a waiting room, three chairs together and sat together still talking and laughing. The atmosphere in this office was jovial, carefree, fun. A young woman brought somthing out of the office and walked with it through the waiting room to a door that I had not noticed before. She was talking and laughing with people in the waiting room. In order to open the door and put this something in it, she had to push something out of the way that was on the floor. I had not noticed it before. There were a couple of plastic bags, like roasting bags tightly sealed on the floor. She moved them first with her foot, still laughing and talking, and then with the door she was opening. She said something about them, and continued with her task. When she opened the heavy door, there appeared on the other side, cubbies, like post office boxes. Most of them had these bags in them and she was trying to stuff another one into a cubby that was already full. She was still laughing and talking when one of the bags popped out on the other side of the wall, and dropped into the river. Then I looked at the ones on the floor that had been in the way, and I saw that they were babies. All of the cubbies held these bags that were filled with babies. There was one in a cubby close to the floor that was alive still, and gasping for breath.

My friend looked at her husband and daughter and asked what is this place, but by then she knew. She looked in the eyes of her daughter and realized that there was so much there that she didn't know. Even then she still loved her daughter. In her shame at her ignorance, and realizing that if she spoke, she would stand alone, she fled. She escaped to a dark corner of the cool, damp parking garage, and sobbed, while the rushing river drowned the sound of her torment.

She awoke, sobbing. She tried to get back to sleep and go back into the clinic and talk to her husband and her daughter, but she could not.

The sadness of this dream stayed with her for several days. It was only a dream. What could make her so sad?

She was sad because this dream was a reflection of her desire to go with the flow. She desires to be the one who talks and laughs with her husband and daughter, and not the one who stands alone against what is wrong.

She was sad because this dream revealed to her that her timidity is a sin. There are times when we must speak out. There are times when it is too late.

She was sad that she was that cowering simp in the corner of a parking garage sobbing, rather than the mother in there reasoning with her daughter and standing boldly and in love for the truth.