Dreams Not Made for the Faint of Heart..

...often they bring the seeds of mysterious witness.  And I don't mean the little "handing out tracts on a street corner" type of bearing witness.  I mean reaching in your gut, dragging your naked soul out and allowing someone else to affect it.  I mean being a light-bearer in a dark places, and the first thing the light does is illuminate you as a target for trouble.  I mean shedding prayer-tears on behalf of someone on suicide watch--or even really knowing a person in that much anguish.
I mean that.

August 5

Wow!  I woke up praying for P. in a dream. In the dream-prayer, I was recounting the reality that nothing is particularly harder or easier for God.  He's God!  It is all do-able to Him.  So we can freely and faithfully bring what would seem hard (to us) as smoothly and confidently before Him as we would bring what seems easy to solve. 
R. and I were in prayer for her, and P. was in anguish.

On my reading, I'm beginning the Gospel of John, and seeing in the footnotes the literal meaning of the name, John.  "God has been gracious..." and the name used for God in that meaning is the most personal, intimate one He assigned to Himself.  In the description of John the Baptist and his witness are these words:  "This man came for a witness of the Light, that all through him might believe."  And he, too, like the Gospel-writer wore the imprint of God's most intimate name, and he pressed people into the water of life.  Yet, "He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light."  Do we have any idea the incredible balance he had to maintain? the spiritual tension involved in living such a calling?

Powerful witness.  Powerful submission. Mystery.  Reflections on all these washed over me like tidal waves responding to a distant moon.

A few days later, I whimsically emailed P. about the strange little dream I had about her.  She emailed me back.  That very night of my dream, she'd been in the ER, serious problems with her heart.  She was fine in the end.  Came out of the whole episode with a treatment plan for the healing of her heart.
But from that day forward she considered me as one who has what she called a dream ministry.
Other dreams like that one did sporadically follow.
But why I'd be called to it, I had no idea at the time.