Bring Me A Dream

Last night, I had the coolest dream.
Well, sort of.
It was kind of violent and I woke up feeling slightly anxious and disturbed.
But then I remembered the dream in its entirety and my anxiety melted into a weird kind of awe.

So here's the scene my subconscious conjured up for me while I slept:

I'm in a nice, well-furnished room in a house owned by an upper-middle-class black family: a man, a woman, and a gender neutral baby (at least from what I know). The man's occupation? A sailor. (ha.) At the beginning of the dream, as is normally the case, I'm merely an observer... I'm in the movie, but I'm not actually a character. I'm an outsider. Anyway, now that we've established my point of view...
I'm not sure what altercation had previously taken place, but somehow this black couple had got into a lot of trouble with some mafia-type gangsters. Two of them, I think. The baby had been taken away, and the sailor-husband was bound and gagged in another room. The woman is lying on her belly on the floor behind one of the couches in the room that I am also in. She is hiding from the mafia men. One of the mafia men comes in the room to search for her. She is terrified. I stand in the corner and wait for something to happen, I guess. When he finally discovers her (there was really no way for her to escape), he holds a gun to her head, but he doesn't shoot. She moves to the couch and sits down with him. The mafia man's accomplice comes in the room. He looks a lot like Peter Pettigrew, from the Harry Potter movies. Of the two, he's clearly the side-kick. Maybe they interrogated the woman (who, while I'm at it, bears slight a resemblance to Michelle Obama) or discussed their next move.

Suddenly, in marches Mr. Sailor. The mafia men calmly ask how he managed to escape.

"Because I'm a Sailor!" the man replies. (I have no idea why the sailor thing was so important-- but it was.)

Peter-Pettigrew-man whips out his gun and shoots sailor-husband. I, the observer, am shocked.

The head-mafia-guy must have been shocked too, because he promptly re-aimed his gun at his side-kick and shot him in the eye (yes, the eye), then twice in the back, and then once in the shoulder. At this point I'm about be sick in my own dream. Realizing that I am actually in complete control of the situation, I start to wonder if I should abort.

But then, something hits me. Peter-Pettigrew-mafia-man is not yet dead-- though he probably should be in reality. Knowing his life is hanging by a thread and could end at any moment, I take on a more active role and officially enter the world of the the mafia/sailor/Michelle-Obama drama (dang, I couldn't have planned that rhyme any better).

I rush to the aide of P-man (that's what we'll call our Peter-Pettigrew look-alike from now on) and the first thing I say to him is this: "Have you ever heard gospel of Jesus Christ?"

He says no.

"I have to tell you! Can I tell you? This is important. You need to hear this-- you could die any moment!"


I launch into evangelism-mode. P-man listens intently as I explain the significance of God's perfect plan for creation and our destruction of it. I tell him of our separation from the Lord because of our pitiful sinful nature. I claim the truth about God's supreme justice and the need for our sin to be punished. I preach the gospel message of Jesus Christ and the freedom he offers us by his sacrifice. I invite my horribly injured dream-friend to accept this good news as truth and live his life (the minutes of it that remain) nestled deeply in the bosom love of Christ.

Seriously. In complete clarity. It's the only part of my dream that really made sense.
And it's the part that changed what could have been a downright unsettling nightmare into one of the coolest dreams I've had in a while.
Because really, this dream made me aware of two things:

1. They say (I don't know who 'they' are, but I feel like they're credible) that what you dream about can indicate something you know well or have learned well and has been brewing in your mind. I remember my first dream in (accurate!) Spanish two years ago, when I was in the midst of trying to learn it, and being super excited because "I must really be absorbing it if I can do it in my sleep!" Maybe it's a stretch, but I feel like it's semi-significant if I can share the gospel clearly and concisely in a dream. It means I've got it on the brain (cool!) AND I'm able to grasp it even in my subconscious (double cool!)

2. The urgency and brazenness conveyed by my dream self in sharing the gospel kind of struck me as relevant. For dream-Kelsey, it was perfectly natural for her immediate thoughts regarding the dying man before her to be "I MUST TELL YOU ABOUT JESUS!" For real-life Kelsey, the situation is slightly different. Real-life Kelsey goes to a state university in the midwest-- she attends classes in the late morning and afternoon. She does homework and completes reading assignments when she can find the motivation. She lives in a residence hall filled to the brim with 700 + other students (mainly freshmen-- and mainly girls). She follows and loves Jesus the best she can, and when she has a free moment she goes to casually share about him on her campus. She doesn't live in a world of mafia-type gangsters or crime-scene dramas... but nonetheless, the dream world and the real world are more similar than real-life Kelsey allows herself to admit most of the time.

I am faced with hundreds and hundreds of wounded, dying people every day. I can look in the mirror and see a former wounded, dying person who has been mercifully healed and redeemed by Christ. And should my response to the death I'm unfortunately surrounded by in this concrete world be any different than that of my ridiculous dream-self's response? I have to admit that I think the dream-Kelsey that appeared in my dream last night might have more of a handle on evangelism than the Kelsey whose fingers are currently typing this. I wonder what would happen if I decided that tomorrow I was going to approach everyone like P-man-- with a "This can't wait!" kind of attitude. Granted, if I actually ran around the university screaming about everyone's pending death, I might be arrested and the message of the gospel would likely be lost in my fanaticism. Definitely don't want that.

But really. Do I see the faces of my peers and classmates and realize the gravity of their fate without Jesus? Despite what they do or how they act or what they say, am I so apathetic that I do not have compassion upon them and long to tell them the truth of the gospel?

Something to think about.

Most of my dreams are completely ridiculous. This one included.
But who's to say the Lord can't use figments of my subconscious imagination to reveal truth to me?
He's creative enough. He's innovative enough. I wouldn't put it past him. :)