Now observe my Herculean effort to keep this burst of words both ladylike and dignified.
So, the human subconscious is really a striking piece of Divine handiwork when you think about it. It has often been observed that if there is a bit of knowledge we would just love to be privy to in glory, it is how dreams work (this comes up often when watching babies sleep — is the whole thing just one fabulous milk parade or do we come hard wired with the ability to dream about playing poker with Kevin Bacon, even before we know that is a thing to aspire to?). I am hardly going to espouse new theories now — I just barely got my teeth brushed at the time of writing this and I don’t wish to discuss my state of dress. Suffice to say, it has not achieved its final state.
I keep having the same theme show up in my dreams, multiple nights in a row. There was the one where I was in Brazil, deboning a huge bucket full of supposedly Brazilian salmon fillets that were all stamped on the back with “Made in Washington” (in my dream, I felt ripped off), and all I can think about is getting on to the back of the passing moped, because it is traveling to much-needed facilities. Then there was last night’s dream, the one where I was on a professional football team with that kid who was in the Peter Pan movie with Johnny Depp and they were oddly sponsored by an antique knick-knack shop and sure enough, I miss the bus because I am in dire need of the bathroom and the only available stall is the one with no lock, and of course that means a gaggle of girls starts pushing on the door.
Usually, these are the kinds of dreams that show up during pregnancy: the kind where it makes perfect sense to relieve yourself in a kitchen drawer or someone’s closet (wow, you are learning a lot about me today). But apparently there are exceptions.
This is probably less about the complexities of my psyche, and more about the Pellegrino I have been drinking with dinner, and the dangerous combination of a very full bladder and a desire to not get out of bed, and so each night I wake up, convinced that it must be pretty close to morning, so I’ll just hold it til the alarm goes off. But it turns out my internal clock forgot to change with Daylight Savings, so what in my mind should be only another 15 minutes or so actually turns out to be quite a bit longer, yet by the time I figure this out, then I figure it would be just silly to get up now… so close to the alarm… sigh.
Somewhere in the wee smas trying not to think about wee, it hit me that there was probably a blog post in this. And then a dear friend sent this to me:
“As I was thinking about your pain, I thought of heaven. How many Christians, both past and present, survived their trials by keeping their eyes on Christ and his heaven. I went to the CS Lewis Institute website and copied this (relevant to The Problem of Pain):
“I reckon,” said St. Paul “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” If this is so, a book on suffering which says nothing of heaven, is leaving out almost the whole of one side of the account. Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth, and no solution of the problem of pain which does not do so can be called a Christian one.14
Heaven is not only the central motivation of every being, but it is also the fulfillment of all our desires. We will discover that there is a place in heaven that is purposely shaped for each soul. It is in heaven that we discover who we are and what we are made for.
The self — “the golden apple of selfhood,” Lewis calls it at the end of the final chapter of The Problem of Pain — if surrendered to God becomes the great reward in heaven such that we find our hunger for ourselves and community deeply satisfied as we enter into a dance of creation that fills us with eternal and unspeakable joy.
(Stephen Eyre’s thoughts and my emphasis added)
Can you wait?”
The answer is: not on my own strength. But God has not left us to ourselves, to depend on our own strength. God is our strength, our Rock, and our hope. All that is broken, all the pressure that can build up in our hearts and bodies — the weight of grief and loss and pain, all of it will be finally redeemed. Everything lost will be found, every white-knuckled longing for morning will find its satisfaction. Hold fast. Don’t let go til morning comes, til the Dayspring Himself sets everything to right… til the last alarm sounds.
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