Once upon a dream....okay I stole that line...but it's a good one

Happy Friday to you all!

Well the week has flown by as if it had wings and I can’t believe it is already time to email you.

We made a very quick trip to Austin to visit John for Easter weekend.

I know I am prone to exaggeration, but I mean Q.U.I.C.K.

Russ found us a great rate for a direct flight on Southwest to Austin on Saturday morning with a return on Monday.

Direct flight was a win…Southwest and their free baggage check was a win…good price was a win….the only drawback was the departure time for these two flights.

Our departure and return meant we had to be up and at ‘em at 4 A.M.

So needless to say with the drive home from St. Louis on Monday and hitting the ground running when we got here, we were tuckered by the afternoon.

Russ had some things he needed to get taken care of and I was knee deep in laundry so after a few errands together, he went to get the oil changed in the truck and I took a nap.

If you were in the Midwest on Monday, you might remember it was stormy and the winds were particularly impressive even for us.

As I dozed, the house must have trembled a bit. Our back yard forms a bit of a wind tunnel under lesser gales and so the sound of it whisking past must have filtered into my dreams.

In the visions that played through my mind while I slept, I dreamt that our home was literally picked up in a tornado and dropped several blocks away.

Of course it wasn’t really our house, you know how dreams go, but it all seemed so real. Rachel and I were in the house and Russ had taken the children out for an errand. Zach and John and Sarah were not in the dream but their possessions left behind from over the years were in various rooms.

We were trying to gather what we could as we watched the foundation slowly disintegrate around us. Computers and photo albums, keepsakes and clothing we might need; all vied for a place in our arms as we tried to collect what seemed needed and wanted to save. It was a race against the crumbling walls and my mind was also racing, wondering if Russ and the children were okay.

And then the door opened and in they came. In the dream Caroline ran to us and held tight to our legs, much like she most definitely would if this scenario were to play out in real life, or just any time she has been separated from one or more of her people for more than an hour.

In the dream, all the frantic grabbing for stuff ceased and even as the tears came to both my dream eyes and physical eyes, the cloud of the dream bled into the reality of me sleeping safely on our real couch in our real house still anchored on our real plot of land. I lay there half awake, wiping a flow of tears from, as I slowly accepted that everything was fine and the house we live in was just being assailed by a Midwestern blast of wind, not a tornado.

The relief of holding that sweet little whisp of a child and feeling her soft hair against my face flooded me and chased away the crazy fear of the dream.

And as I gathered my wits about me, I realized how the message of the dream is powerful.

When all is shaking and the material things and the things of substance that we think are the essence of our life are being wiped away, we realize it is the relationships and the people that matter.

We live in uncertain times where things that we thought to be of the utmost importance can disappear at a moments’s notice.

I don’t have a great moral of the story deal here, just a reminder to hug your people. Make every effort to see them and spend time with them and again…HUG THEM at least one a day if not more.

Sweet dreams and remember how much you are loved <3

Share and Save: