Shards of glass

Last night or, to be more precise,  just before dawn this morning, I awoke from a dream that I remember in startling detail. I was at some sort of tribal, artsy party on a beach. I had applied all kinds of beach debris--shells, small stones, bits of seagrass, and crab claws--to my body with glue. I was covered in bits of the sea and quite proud of my creativity. There was a man there (James) whom I had known as a boy when both of us were in high school. I wasn't that interested in talking to him, but after I had fully adorned myself in sea bits, I sat beside him as he leaned against a sand bank alone, in silence, staring at the water.

When I sat down he put his arm on my shoulder and, still looking at the water, said, "You know, I really used to love you back then."

My hands were covered with glue and my mouth was full of shards of glass. I said, "I want to tell you a story. But wait until I get this glass out of my mouth." I removed glass and more appeared. I continued removing it, waiting to tell James my story.

At that point, my former bastard bully of a husband stood at the shore and shouted at me, "What are you doing with him? You get away from him!"

I saw the ex-husband without feeling any emotion other than mild amusement. He didn't frighten me or make me anxious. I just chuckled and said, through the shards of glass in my mouth, "I don't care what you think. I'm free now." And I awoke.

My first drowsy thought was to thank God for the dream. "Thank you, Lord! Thank you--you know I needed to feel that. Thank you!" And I recall thanking him for my interaction with James and my confidence that I could remove the shards of glass--not for my lack of fear or emotion toward my husband.

But now, hours later, the images of the dream still vivid, I wonder why I was so grateful to God for the dream. I know that dreams are often God's way of sending us messages. But what was the message?

Having sharp things--pins, needles, glass, or fish hooks--in my mouth, throat, sometimes my arms, is a recurring image in my dreams. Always I remove some and more appear--I can never get them out. I used to interpret that as meaning I was frustrated that I wasn't able to express myself without retribution.

My sense is that my gratitude was more because I knew that James loved me when we were young. I was fully aware that it was in the past. And this time I felt that I could get past the shards of glass and tell my story and that my husband was just a silly, angry guy on the beach. But the intense feeling of gratitude, that the Lord had sent me a message, I still can't decipher. I need to sleep on that.