When the Nightmare is Real

I've told you before...I wake up better via a series of snoozes. It's really true. If I had to bounce out of bed and be happy on the first alarm...well, I'd never make it. This is why I don't fight fires.

Sunday morning, during the snooze fest, I had a dream. A very real dream. One of those where all the characters involved are real people I know...and they're even participating in their real life roles in the dream.

I dreamed I scooted in to engineer Mid-Morning - cutting it a little close and needing to hurry to get the board all set up the way we need it for the show. As I fiddled with it, I saw the clock creeping closer to 10 and right about the time the theme music should have rolled, another song started playing. I looked at the computer in a panic and saw that the music list was not in the right spot. If I didn't find the 10:00 hour on there, I was going to be in trouble.

Not wanting to bother any of the morning guys who had just left, I set out to outsmart the computer on my own. (Even in a dream that's a bad idea.) I scrolled up and down...up and down...and couldn't find 10:00. Meanwhile, I was still trying to set up the board and for some reason, the buttons I needed to change refused to be changed. They were stuck.

Finally, in tears, I went into the morning guys' office and one of them came over to fix the computer for me. He wanted to teach me, but I kept insisting I had to fight with the board to get it ready. (Because, you see, meanwhile, Lynne had added a live guest to the studio - someone I know in real life and have no idea why she would have even been IN Fort Wayne - and I had to set up  a mic for her too.) I was assured the computer was fixed, and though I was still messing with the buttons on the board, I prepared for the theme music to roll.

And another song began to play. Lynne looked mildly annoyed at this point, since it was 10 after 10 and we had not BEGUN our show yet. I was sobbing, trying to figure out the board AND the computer, when another work guy came in. I begged him to help and he took pity on me, sat down at the computer and started to work. He said he had it fixed, and I said, Please don't leave until the show is rolling. Good thing he stayed, because another song started.

By that time, it was 25 after 10, I was wailing, the board was stuck, the computer was a mystery, Lynne had added three MORE live guests to the studio (where are these people coming from???) and the bug man came in to check for bugs.

And then I woke up. Because all those songs that were playing? That was my alarm going off - and I was too deeply engrossed in the nightmare to know that's what it was!

Oh I hate those dreams! The ones that are so real...

But sometimes they are real. So real that they're actually life. You know what I mean. I'm sure you do. When you look around and think This can't be happening. But try as you might, an alarm doesn't go off. It's real. It's life. It's yours.

What do you do then? Where is God then? Why isn't He fixing it? Why isn't He making it just a dream?

Well, I don't know what you should do next...because I don't know your nightmare. I don't know why God isn't fixing it, but I do know where He is. He's right there. Right beside you.

I read a reminder last week (wish I could remember where I read it!) that God is still the God of a tender heart. Remember how Jesus wept (of course you do! You memorized that verse at some point during your lazy teenage years when you had to have a verse committed to memory...) with Mary and Martha after their brother died? He didn't avoid them. He wept with them.

So He's there. Right there. And even if the nightmare is painfully real, He'll stay and weep with you.