Typically we think of dreams as good. Goals to be achieved, and happy thoughts that we like to linger on. Then you are sleeping one night, and you are being chased, or crushed, or something of the like and you can’t seem to wake up. Finally you wake up with a gasp, but it isn’t over. The dream you want to leave behind is the one that follows you for the day, or week - until finally one day you find yourself lingering on a happier dream again.

That is kind of what my life feels like. I am being chased by the ideals of what I want, and what I want to be like and accomplish - and I can’t quite force myself into consciousness so that I can escape the fear and dread that continually wells up in me. I remember the happier dreams, but right now I just want to escape the darkness that threatens to never subside. I find myself longing for that unsettled feeling that follows the dream because at least then I know it is over, and I can at least cautiously try to leave it behind me.

You would think that when the worst thing you experience is in your head that you can control it. Dreams aren’t like that though. They sweep you away into a world without rules, the impossibly good can happen as easily as the impossibly bad.

Right now I want to wake up. I want to have control. I want to see a change in my circumstance, but I can’t. It is not only up to me, and no one else sees the urgency. The only person who can help doesn’t understand the context of my experience. They aren’t wrapped in the same darkness, even if they do have a darkness of their own.

So here I sit. Seeking out the light, praying to my heavenly Father to reach down and pull me out of the darkness, and dreaming in the darkness of the days when my mourning will be turned to dancing by the grace and power of He who leads me.