Rhonda's Dream

A week or so before I learned that we lost Benjamin, my friend Rhonda had a dream about me. (Yes, this is the same Rhonda who God has used to bless me so many times before.) She told me about the dream when she first learned what had happened, and she said that she even wrote about it in her journal. So today, she finally sent me her journal entry:

Emily was playing in a river. There was unspeakable joy. The river was made of water that was like diamonds, and she was throwing the water up and it was like diamonds were sparkling in the air. There was a music, but it was not really audible, like it was coming from our hearts. The whole place was singing, and she was dancing to the music in this river.

All of the sudden a dark cloud came and it was full of thunder and lightening and it was threatening to overtake the atmosphere...I saw a look on her face that was fearful and also confused, like she did not know what to think about what was happening. Why would this storm cloud come and invade such a beautiful place? All of the sudden a look of clarity and determination came over her and she decided to start dancing again in the river (how like Emily)...The cloud was still there and had cast a shadow over the whole place, but it was like she was not going to let it take away the joy that she had from the beginning... I don't know if I should tell Emily about this or not, please help me to know LORD.

It turns out, my storm clouds came before she had to worry about whether to tell me about her dream or not. So when she shared with me that she saw me dancing in the midst of my storm, it really touched me, and I immediately had hope. It challenged me, somehow. Challenged me to dance and not drown.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

I firmly believe that one of the main reasons why God allows us to go through grief is so that we may have empathy for others who experience grief as well. Grief leads to ministry. After my last miscarriage, I'll be honest, I tried to skip over the grief and jump straight into the ministry aspect of it all. Bad idea. This time, I'm going to allow this grief to be what it is for as long as necessary. I'm sad. I'm not over it. I'm not ready to move on yet. But someday I will.

Someday, I'll dance.