I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed I was outside a house that sort of looked like our old house but wasn’t in our neighborhood, it was in a friend’s old neighborhood nearby. I was on the porch and the kids and the ex were inside the house. A groundhog was to the right of the porch sniffing around and I started watching it. It came very close and stood up on its hind legs and pulled a flower or a bush or something to its face to eat. Kinda looked like it was standing up and talking into a microphone. Anyway, then it looked at me and started talking. All I remember it saying was that “sometimes marriages need some work.”
Then, three cows walked through the backyard (I thought they were deer at first, but then realized they were cows). Several horses ran through afterward. It looked like they were Cougars at first, but then I saw them as horses (it was twilight). Then a cougar ran through and the groundhog went running after all of them barking.
I woke up and had this overwhelming feeling that I should try to save my marriage again.
I laid in bed for probably a half hour praying and debating this with God.
I have always asked God to speak to me in dreams and tell me things that I wouldn’t get or understand in the daylight in my dreams. Maybe this is not a good idea?
A little more context. The night before, I got a ride home from Target when my car was stranded, from Robert, the guy who is one of the leaders of my divorce recovery group. One of the things he said was that he always believes in reconciliation. He believes God can always work a miracle. That said, last time I heard him talk at DR, he was talking about how his ex-wife had called him and acted like she wanted to get back together. He explained to the group that he had not thought that a good idea. We talked about how reconciliation may not be the marriage coming back together, but two people who were married coming to grips with how to manage with kids and their past.
So I was in agony from this dream. Just had this dread in my heart that I was being called to do something completely opposite from where I felt God had been leading me over the past six months.
So – here’s my interpretation of the dream. Or my first attempt at it. I think the cows are my ex and the kids. Cows are pretty stubborn creatures, they pretty much do their thing and go where they are prodded and pushed, but not happily. I think the fact that I thought they were deer first indicates how I felt a bit blind-sided by all the meanness and disrespect over the last few years, because I thought they were good and beautiful like I would think if I saw deer in the fields. Not sure what the horses meant.
The cougar following them all is indicative of the attack they are all under from their dark side – or Satan. They are being pursued and threatened by evil. They are running scared, without direction and without a lot of light.
I wonder if the groundhog chasing them is a symbol of what I would be if I was chasing them. A loud-mouthed rodent of no consequence barking indiscriminately and not able to have any effect at all on a cougar chasing cows.
Wow. I think that might be it. So instead of fearing the dream as a prescription for what I didn’t think was right (listening to the groundhog and continuing to flail away at a dead marriage to revive it), maybe the dream was God’s catalyst to consider that there are some things I cannot have any control over and that I have to let him handle.
Men, don’t be a A loud-mouthed rodent of no consequence barking indiscriminately and not able to have any effect at all on something like a cougar chasing cows…
Notes from an Alienated Dad 