Nightmare

Sometimes I wonder how many nightmares it's normal for adults to have. I probably have a couple a week, and last night's was especially elaborately plotted. First, a well-intentioned but disastrously untrustworthy person (a real life person, but not known to anybody who reads this blog) moved into our town, and started arriving at our house unannounced, just walking in the door. A couple of times, the person walked into our bedroom, where we'd been asleep, and just started talking to us. In the way of dreams, this behavior seemed plausible and caused a problem for nobody else, but after several times, I realized, "You know, some people might consider this intrusive. This person should at least knock!" I think that in the dream, the person had formerly lived in our house, which partly explained the liberty. But it gradually dawned on me that the prior claim had no place in the current situation.

So Sam said he would talk to the person. I went with him to a conference of some kind at work--in the dream, I did not work at the same place. He had to go even though he knew this person would be there. At least this would give him the opportunity to insist on our privacy.

When we arrived, someone offered me a job of sorts: "If you'll ask some questions during the next presentation, we'll include your meals and lodging too." I was happy to be useful, but then something was wrong. The untrustworthy person and Sam were having some kind of emotional conversation, and then he came over to me, shaking his head and confessing that he couldn't bring himself to tell the person that s/he was unwelcome in what had been his/her home (which, incidentally, is rather unlike Sam in real life as he's obsessive about home security). I was crestfallen, but then determined that I would speak to the person myself and politely say that it was our house now. In the meantime, I was listening to this conference presentation, where I was discovering that something unsettling was going on.

It turned out there had been some crimes committed, fires set, lives jeopardized or even taken. Computer surveillance was involved. Everyone was trying to figure out whodunit. They showed some of the tapes they had found, and I noticed, to my silent horror, that one of the cameras had been hidden in our bedroom, and that the untrustworthy person had taken advantage of this ongoing crisis to get copies.

In a casual conversation after the formal presentations, I realized that the person I was talking to, a student (but not a real-life one), was the perpetrator of these acts. Then I was presented with a bill for my meals and lodging, which I tried to explain were supposed to have been covered. Distracting. All the while, other people from our real-life workplace were coming and going, and I was trying to signal them that I had discovered the identity of the perpetrator, while also trying to maintain her trust. I didn't have a password that for some reason I needed to record our conversation, and I couldn't seem to signal Sam or anybody, so I went with her back to another building, hidden behind iron gates and an expansive lawn. The room we went to was adjacent to where one of the higher-ups at our workplace was meeting with lots of other administrators in a sort of council setting to determine the cause of the crimes. I slipped away from the perpetrator with some flimsy excuse, and went to them to whisper, "I know who did it--she's right in there. I'm trying to get her to confess. But how do I prove she's told me?" And the higher-up-person gave me a great big, theatrical smile and said, "Just do it." And as I was walking away, she called afterward, "There's some nice jewelry over there that you can wear in case we can get it all on camera!" (That comment was no less disturbing for its having been a dream.)

I went back to the perpetrator, and to my disgust, watched as she viewed some tapes that included a few seconds from our house. The tape only showed the empty room and maybe one of us walking through, but I felt ill, with a sense of barely controlled panic. Still, I acted as if I hadn't noticed, continuing with the conversation. Just as I was about to get the person to confess, I remembered our baby, and realized that my role in all of this might jeopardize her safety. Somehow I knew that because the perpetrator was young and a student, she would be released after only a short time and would surely come after the baby later. And suddenly, I didn't know what to do: I felt the urgency of the moment, this atavistic need to protect the baby, shame at not being willing to do what had seemed right and courageous seconds before.

And then I woke up, instantly feeling this sense of relief that I didn't have to decide. Part of me wanted to lie there in bed and think, "We're safe, the three of us sleeping here--and nobody can hurt us." But that's not true either, is it? We're all so vulnerable, our existences so fragile--and worse, so are those of the people we love. God never promises us that we won't suffer, or that we won't lose--everything. Look at Job! But what he does promise is that his presence will somehow be greater than any betrayal, any violation or violence or tragedy. He never asks us to deny the presence of those possibilities in our lives; in fact, I think he asks us to live with them . . . but somehow to seek and nurture a faith that might, somehow, grow larger than even all that we have to lose.