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A Dream Interpretation Journey
This chapter contains a group of dreams and insights I was working through as I began writing this book in the summer of 2019. As with many of the dreams in this book, I have simplified some of them to avoid unnecessary details.
4/16/19 Dream: A man somehow ended up on the back of a police officer. Then he fell to the ground and showed symptoms of a heart attack. His wife rushed to his side, and the man told his wife he was going home (i.e. dying). I thought about how difficult his death would be for his wife.
When I looked at this dream the next day, I probably said what I often say: “What!?” I had little idea what it could mean. A police officer can be symbolic for authority, and the dream was obviously a picture of someone suffering loss, but I couldn’t see the significance of this.
4/29/19 Dream: I was in my garage. There were lots of fiber optic cables. A guy from my workplace in real life was there, and he is an expert with fiber optics. One cable was loose. I tried to put it in place but couldn’t do it.
I could interpret the symbols in this dream, but I still had little clue how it applied to me. Fiber optic cables make connections between computers; I guessed they were symbolic for me making connections with people or God. In my dreams, my garage seems to be symbolic for a place where my life (symbolized by my house) meets the world around me, so the dream was probably about me making connections with people.
The guy in the garage was an expert I knew from my job in real life, so he seemed to be an encouraging symbol. There was no one I would rather have help me with a fiber optics problem. Though he didn’t fix the loose connection in the dream, I read into the dream that he eventually would. I figured, “Why else would God put him there if he wasn’t going to help me fix it?”
But what connection was loose? I didn’t know. Nevertheless, the dream helped me pray and look for more guidance.
5/8/19 Insight (not a dream): I believe the Holy Spirit spoke a simple message to me from a Bible verse:
The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?
The message I sensed was that when people face difficulties, for example a sickness, they can make their way through those difficulties if their spirit is healthy. They will embrace the problem, find God’s grace, and press into His answers. But if their spirit is broken, they end up giving up before God’s grace does its full work. They might say that they are too sinful or impatient to find His help. They might say that other people have it easier than them, and if others had their problems, they would give up too. For whatever reason, they fail to press into God’s solutions.
Rejection is a good example of a broken spirit. It causes people to say, “This bad stuff is happening to me because I am a loser. There’s nothing I can do but to try to minimize my pain.”
This insight about broken spirits seemed to line up with the meaning of the Proverbs 18:14, but even if I was misunderstanding the proverb, it still seemed to be a true observation about life. I decided to treat it as a prophetic message from the Lord that I should test by cautiously seeing where it led me.
(NOTE: A broken spirit in this scripture is different than a broken and contrite heart in Psalm 51:17. In Psalm 51, broken and contrite refers to a willingness to repent. In Proverbs 18:14, a broken spirit is a picture of losing heart.)
A couple of days after receiving this insight, I returned to the dream about the man with the heart attack. I didn’t sense the Holy Spirit say to me, “This dream is about a broken spirit,” but the symbols fit. Because I work on the assumption that dreams are one piece of a message God is speaking in many ways, I figured that if the Holy Spirit was speaking to me from the Scriptures about a broken spirit, there was a good chance the dream was giving another piece of this message.
I saw the heart attack as symbolic for the broken spirit. It occurred after falling off of the back of a police officer, an authority figure. People often suffer a broken spirit when they trust an authority figure that fails to hold them up (symbolized by falling off the officer’s back). For example, if a child trusts a parent who fails to come through, the child can conclude that all authority figures, including God, will eventually fail them. Or the child may conclude that he or she is so unlovable that no one will give them the help they need. Either way, the child grows up without the trust required to face adversity and ends up giving up in trials rather than pressing through to God’s answers.
These insights into a broken spirit helped me to understand people better. I had at times seen someone struggling, and I had shared how God had helped me through a similar trouble, but they told me that I was not qualified to encourage them. For example, one time I was a member of a support group. I had shared something with the group, and I was surprised by the way someone reacted. I asked the group leader about my sharing, and he said that people wanted to hear from someone who was still struggling to overcome sin. I had found victory many years earlier, so people couldn’t relate to me. He summed up his point by saying, “Perhaps it has been too easy for you.”
I was confused. First of all, it didn’t seem easy for me. But more than that, I had expected that people would want to hear from someone who had found victory. That was certainly who I wanted to hear from. I treated overcomers like burning bushes. I turned to them and sought to hear their stories in the hope that God would speak to me.
It wasn’t until I gained insight into what it means to have a broken spirit that I understood what the leader had said. People with broken spirits often feel that they are so defective that the best they can receive from others is a little comfort and hope. When I shared how God had met me and helped me to find answers, I seemed to be saying that I had succeeded where they had failed, and they felt condemned.
Now that I believed I understood the heart attack dream, I decided to see if other dreams from the same time might also be about broken spirits. I found several that shed light on different aspects of the problem, and one of those was the dream about the fiber optic cables. I theorized that it was about a loose connection which was related to people with broken spirits. When I got around them, something in me misfired, and I didn’t know how to relate to them.
I considered what this might mean for almost a month. One question that came up was, “Why hadn’t I fallen into a broken spirit? Why was it that in my darkest moments I still tended to press into God to find answers?”
6/4/19 Potential insight (not a dream): I wrote an entry in my journal in which I theorized that maybe having a tendency toward Borderline Personality Disorder had given me an advantage when it came to avoiding a broken spirit. Because my emotions made it difficult for me to fit in with others, I had been forced to go to Jesus directly. Maybe this had helped me to receive His help in ways that others missed.
The night after writing this, I dreamed the following:
6/5/19 Dream: I was playing soccer and wasn’t very good at it. I also took off my sneakers in the middle of the game. At one point, I had to throw the ball in from out of bounds, and I couldn’t figure out who was on my team. The other team scored off my throw in.
I understood the symbolism …and I didn’t like it! Soccer is a game I had never really played. (I played basketball and a few other sports, but not soccer.) Because of this, soccer was probably symbolic for me doing an activity in which I had little wisdom. This interpretation was supported by the fact that the dream showed me not being very good at it, taking off my sneakers, not knowing who was on my team, and helping the other team to score. This raised my level of cluelessness to embarrassing levels.
But in what area was I clueless? And should I feel bad that the dream portrayed me in this way? Fortunately, I don’t base my relationship with the Lord or my worth on my performance. So rather than lingering on concerns over my spiritual clumsiness, I decided to find the symbols amusing. I trusted the Lord to take care of whatever problems they pointed to.
6/9/19 Dream: I was driving a car. Adam (a friend from church) was nearby. I couldn’t get my car to stop moving. I tried the main brake and the emergency brake, but nothing worked. Cars all around me were having the same trouble, and they were all moving together like a herd. I finally got out of my car, and it stopped moving.
The symbol of my car moving by itself has been common in my dreams. It is usually a picture of some sort of lack of self-control. Yet this dream was different than others of this flavor. Rather than showing just my car being out of control, it showed a large group of cars together in that state. I didn’t know what this had to do with my life.
7/19/19 Insight (not a dream): By this time, I was looking at my dreams and journal entries from early June, and I was questioning the 6/4/19 potential insight that borderline tendencies gave me an advantage in not having a broken spirit. It didn’t seem to match reality. Lots of people with borderline tendencies have broken spirits. In fact, they feel so broken that they cut themselves with sharp objects and have high rates of suicide.
Then I read the 6/5/19 soccer dream, and I still didn’t see how it applied to me.
Finally, I read the 6/9/19 moving cars dream, and the pieces came together. First, the 6/5/19 soccer dream showed me being bad at soccer, helping the other team to score, and taking off my sneakers because the 6/4/19 potential insight was a clueless statement. It was so far off the mark that it could have helped the enemy to “score” in people’s lives if they believed it. If I had told them that my borderline tendencies made it easier for me to avoid a broken spirit, I would have been confirming their mistaken idea that “perhaps it has been too easy for you.” Just as the dream showed me taking off my sneakers, I would have failed to have my feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15). I wouldn’t be telling others that Jesus had been the answer for me, and that He could be the answer for them.
God had saved me by His amazing grace, and the 6/9/19 car dream gave me a picture of how He had done it. The dream was about the condition of all humanity (symbolized by my friend Adam – who shares the name of the first man). Mankind tends to fall into a herd mentality where we get lost together (the cars all moved as if in a herd).
I had escaped because I kept trying to walk with the Lord until He transformed me (I didn’t give up on stopping the car until it stopped). I had overcome by pressing into Him, even when that pulled me away from others. He gave me His grace to get out of myself (out of my car) so I could be different (the car stopped moving with the others when I got out of my car). It wasn’t because of my emotional nature, my willpower, or anything else I had to offer. It was because His truth and power had taught me to surrender to Him by faith.
When I saw this, it brought peace to my heart. I saw more clearly the loose connection between me and others. My relationships tended to become confused when people made statements like “perhaps it has been too easy for you.” Their words caused me to doubt the value of what God had done in my life.
I now sensed the Holy Spirit showing me how to begin to fix this. I should stand on the fact that Jesus had been the answer for me, and I shouldn’t question this fact, even if others told me it couldn’t work for them.
This chapter has been an example of the sorts of back and forth considerations that go through my heart as I consider dreams. I make theories. I test them by looking at what God says to me in many ways. I am cautious and expect to make mistakes. I look for my understanding to grow over time as God slowly pulls together many dreams and insights like words in a sentence (as I mentioned in the previous chapter).
The dreams I have just shared are similar to the majority of my dreams. There were no major shifts in my life because of them. If I hadn’t added them to this book, I would have picked up small lessons from them and forgotten them (as I have done with almost every dream I have ever written down).
I didn’t realize that this “business as usual” experience was about to change.
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