Your Dreams

December 13, 2010

Have you ever had a dream come true?  A waking dream or a sleeping dream?  I’ve had both come true since I’ve been here in New Zealand.  This is what I woke up thinking about this morning.  How lucky I am that I’ve had the opportunity to come to a foreign country and live and work here?  This has been a dream come true.  I’ve also had a sleeping dream come true like when I unexpectedly ran into my only friends in New Zealand and they took me into their homes.

Sometimes you don’t realize you have had a dream come true until you are in the midst of life and realize how happy you are.  I don’t think I knew that I could be this happy about living in New Zealand.  When a dream comes true, life becomes surreal.  Am I actually living this life that I dreamed I would? When I wake up in the morning in my bedroom in my house in New Zealand and realize what has happened to me I become giddy!  “This is it Annemarie.  This is the life you wanted to live.  You are living it!”

I think dreams are the topic of the day because when I came down to have my coffee and read my Bible, the reading for today is all about Joseph interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh’s prisoned officials.  (Genesis 40:4-19)  They are sad because no one can interpret their dreams.  But Joseph gets it right: “Do not interpretations belong to God?”

Somehow I think that’s also how it works even with day-dreams. We have a dream for our life and think it means one thing, but God is the one who interprets dreams.  Maybe that’s why I find myself even more excited about the way my dream has come true than I ever expected.  I had a dream to come to New Zealand and work and live here.  It wasn’t very fleshed out, but God had it all interpreted down to a T.  He knew where I would be and what I’d be doing.  He knew how he would work everything together.  He took my very simple dream, interpreted it into what he had planned, and made it happen.  Maybe too that is why sometimes we feel we fall short of our dreams.  We interpret it to mean one thing, but God has a different interpretation all along.  This is kind of what happened to one of Pharaoh’s officials.

The first dream that Joseph interprets has a happy ending: the official gets his job back.  This happy conclusion gives hope to the baker who has been put in prison.  He begins to believe that his dream can also bode well for him.  But it doesn’t.  The interpretation is that in three days he’ll have his head cut off!  I’m not saying that God can take our dreams and turn them into bad outcomes.  I’m just saying that sometimes the dreams we have for our lives and our interpretations of them are not exactly what God says will happen.  We have to be listening for God’s interpretation.

What I like about this little story is that in the midst of all these sleeping dreams Joseph also admits a day-dream of his own.  He dreams of being out of this prison because he has done nothing to deserve being there.  Joseph tells one of the officials in hopes that once the official is back in Pharaoh’s good graces he can do something for Joseph.  

I think that dreams are an important thing to share whether they be sleep dreams or day dreams.  In sharing our dreams with others we let them out into the light of day.  Even preposterous dreams that we think could never in a million years come true are important to share even with at least one person.  Joseph shared his dream of justice and a life outside of prison.  That was a crazy dream.  But he shared it anyway.  It’s because he shared it that later the official was able to do something for Joseph and his life was completely turned around.  

It is hard to share dreams.  I know because I have some CRAZY dreams that other people probably wouldn’t believe if I told them.  They would probably shoot me down and say, “Well, that’s a nice dream but that’ll never happen!”  But sometimes you have to risk it.  Try and find a safe person who you can trust and tell them.  They may still think you are crazy, but tell them anyway.  They may actually think it is an awesome dream and help you achieve it!  I think that speaking your dreams out loud to someone else makes the dream real.  Then that dream isn’t something that you are just holding on to, gripping it so tightly on the inside. In Joseph’s case it was the telling of this dream that made the dream come true.  

I’m no expert on dreams.  These are just my thoughts and my experiences.  I’m still learning.  I’m in the midst of watching my dreams come true. . . 

What are your dreams?