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A Dream Interpretation Journey
<page 43>I started writing this book in the summer of 2019. I decided to use the dreams I was currently dreaming and interpreting as examples of what it is like to slowly discern insights. I hoped that God would open my heart to messages that would be meaningful and helpful.
The night before I gained the insights I wrote about at the end of the previous chapter, I awoke with the following dream:
7/19/19 Dream: An Iranian army tank was hanging around someone giving a speech in my side yard. The speaker was speaking against the Iranians, and he was also saying too much. I had a chain attached to the tank that I used to keep the tank from threatening the speaker. Then the chain was gone, and the tank turned and came after me. I ran through some playground equipment that slowed the tank down. Then it came through the playground equipment and chased me. I ran from it toward a fence, hoping that if I could dive over it I might find some protection. I wasn’t sure if I would make it. It was scary.
I interpreted the army tank to be symbolic for the following: In the first three chapters of this book, I described how God led me to study wisdom. I approached this task with the attitude: “Even if no one comes with me, I will press into Jesus without compromise. I will trust Him to guide me into His answers.” In the process, my personality became “army-tank-like.” I learned to work around obstacles, press through them, and roll over them. I found grace to honestly analyze problems, experiment with possible solutions, and persevere until I found what worked. I believe this determination that grew within me was symbolized by the army tank in the dream.
Why was the army tank chasing me? The answer to that was hinted at by the fact that it was an Iranian army tank. The name of the country Iran could be seen as a symbolic pun for “I ran,” and I had questions brewing in my heart about whether I was either 1) running from people, or 2) in danger of running over them.
For well over a decade, I had been trying to improve my relationships with other Christians, yet at the same time I felt as if I was running from them (Iran→”I ran”). They told me that they needed a simple approach to the Christian life, but I was suspicious of simple approaches. I had seen many simple approaches provide only temporary relief; then problems returned, sometimes worse than before.
Yet I didn’t want to make them feel bad or put myself in a disagreement I didn’t know how to handle, so I held back and let them do what they wanted. Then I found ways to go off on my own so I could be army-tank-like and dig into the wisdom I suspected was really required.
This weighed on me, because I wasn’t practicing before others the basic honesty and wisdom I practiced before God and myself. I wasn’t confronting them when I thought they were making mistakes.
I did this with somewhat good motives – I was trying to be kind and gentle – but I wondered if I was instead being cowardly. Was I allowing my fear of conflicts keep me from challenging them in the same way I challenged myself?
On the other hand, was it wise to challenge them? Or would that put me in danger of the second form of running (Iran→”I ran”)? Would I end up running over them by forcing them to face problems they lacked the ability to face?
<page 44>I hadn’t been able to find answers to these questions, so I had played it safe and held back. People generally liked my caution, but it wasn’t working for me at an emotional level. Guilt, fear, and anger were stirring in my heart over my lack of transparency and my self-isolation. Was I failing others? Was I cutting myself off from the blessings of honest fellowship?
My heart had been crying out for answers to these sorts of questions for years, yet I hadn’t found them. Eventually my emotions started dysregulating, which was symbolized by the fact that the tank was chasing me. My emotions hadn’t yet caught up to me, but the dream let me know that they were coming. I needed to find God’s answers before they flattened me into the ground.
Sometimes, the first scene of a dream gives the theme of the dream, and I believe that this was the case with the above dream. It showed someone speaking against Iranians with the Iranian army tank nearby. I believe the speaker represented a part of my personality that was in opposition to the army tank. This part of me wanted to be kind and gentle, and it was cautious about speaking in ways that might hurt people.
Though the speaker part of me knew that my army tank-like qualities were useful, it also knew they could be dangerous. At times, they became impatient when others didn’t share their commitment to pressing into issues. When life became frustrating, they sometimes broke down into curse-word filled rants before God. They were willing to alienate others if that was what it took to find real answers. So the speaker spoke against Iranians – i.e. against the qualities that were represented by the tank.
You can think of the speaker as the part of me that was in touch with social norms. It sensed the rules of loving and respectful behavior, and it recognized that I might hurt others if I didn’t follow them. The problem with the speaker, however, was that the rules of loving and respectful behavior didn’t give me the freedom I needed to deal with the emotional issues created by my tendency toward Borderline Personality Disorder. My problems were just too crazy and sinful to fit into a world where I had to stay within the bounds of acceptable attitudes and actions. I needed a place where I could be crazy for long enough to learn how to be sane.
The dream said that the speaker spoke too much. I believe this was symbolic for the fact that social norms gave me too many boundaries for the sort of honest expression of my heart I needed. To be socially acceptable required a level of stability I lacked, so I was forced to hide my instability (which eventually made it grow worse). Over the years I had come to think of the speaker as a sort of noose around my neck, slowly strangling me by telling me what I was and wasn’t allowed to feel.
In order to avoid being derailed by that, I had learned to live differently in private than I did in public. In public, I obeyed the rules, but in private I did whatever was necessary to learn how to handle my emotions. Being by myself gave me the freedom to honestly face my brokenness – in all of its perplexing detail – for as long as it took to develop the spirituality, perseverance, and wisdom I needed to make my way through it. I could be army-tank-like.
So the speaker and the tank existed side by side, antagonistic toward each other and yet dependent upon each other. I made compromises between them in order live well. For the most part, the speaker controlled my public life. It helped me to get along with others. The tank controlled my private life. It helped me to find answers from God.
<page 45>The dream showed three stages in the relationship between the speaker, the tank, and me. (I, of course, knew that the speaker and the tank were parts of “me,” but it was helpful to treat them as somewhat separate while working through my emotions.) The three stages in the relationship between the speaker, the tank, and me were symbolized by 1) the chain, 2) the playground equipment, and 3) the final chase.
For the chain, when I was young, the conflict between the speaker and the tank wasn’t much of a problem. I wasn’t sure if I had anything all that important to say, so I felt fairly content in not bringing it into the open. I believe this was symbolized in the dream by the fact that the chain kept the tank from threatening the speaker. My lack of conviction that I could help others (the chain) kept my desire to charge in and deal with issues (the tank) away from my desire to be kind and gentle (the speaker).
Eventually, however, I began to notice how well my army tank approach was working for me. God used it to build a relationship with Him in which I found amazing answers to deep problems. He met me again and again as I listened to wisdom shouting in the street, and it seemed that everyone could benefit from that sort of experience. People had all sorts of issues that were made worse by their inability to gain God’s perspective in the middle of their troubles. Maybe I could help.
This led to a strong desire to share what I had learned. I believed I had something valuable, and it seemed I had the responsibility to do what I could to offer it to others.
For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!
Yet when I tried to speak, some of those who heard reacted in ways I didn’t expect. Some said, “I can’t deal with the subjects you are speaking about.” Those with broken spirits felt condemned. Others felt I was describing problems that shouldn’t be discussed in public.
Their words upset me, but I had to admit – they made some sense. I was speaking in ways that Christians normally didn’t. This made me wonder if God was leading me or if I just wanted to be heard. Why should I believe I had something so important to say that I needed to make others uncomfortable?
I held back, but I also did my best to search out whether I really did have something to say. I spent close to fifteen years exploring whether the messages stirring inside of me were from God.
I believe that this second stage of the relationship between the speaker, the tank, and me was symbolized by the playground equipment. I was able to “play games with myself” (playground equipment) to slow down the tank. There was always some new book I could read, person I could talk to, or set of ideas I could explore. I found that as long as I was looking into the question of whether I should speak, the driving conviction that I needed to speak (the tank) didn’t catch up to me. The speaker (kindness and gentleness) was able to stay in control of my public life.
<page 46>At one point during this time, I talked to a counselor who was an expert in some of the areas where I believed God was speaking to me. I started our counselling sessions by telling him that I hoped he could do for me what the Jerusalem leaders had done for Paul in Galatians 2:
Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem …and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain.
I wanted to know if God had done something in me that was worth sharing. I described my life story and the messages which I believed had come from it. We spoke for many hours over the course of a year. He let me know that he did believe I had something valuable for God’s people, but he wasn’t sure that I or others were ready for me to go public with it.
I was grateful for his encouragement, and I set about the task of getting ready.
In 2018, more than five years after I had first talked to the counsellor, I believed I was ready. Yet I knew that people who were close to me might struggle with that decision, so I once again talked to the counselor and asked him what he thought.
We talked several times over the next year, and at the beginning of 2019, about six months before I started writing this book, he let me know that though God had obviously worked in my life, he didn’t think it was time for me to start openly sharing. The people in my life were not ready for it, God didn’t seem to be opening doors for me, and I might not be ready. He believed that there would come a time in the future when God would make a way, but he didn’t think that this was that time.
I had never really considered the possibility that I would someday feel ready to speak and yet would decide not to. The emotional difficulty of that seemed beyond my ability to comprehend. Nevertheless, I decided to follow the counselor’s advice.
If I were to describe what this was like for me in terms of the Iranian army tank dream (which I had not yet dreamed at that time), I would say that I had entered the final stage of the relationship between the speaker, the tank, and me. The playground equipment was now gone, so I could no longer distract myself with the process of preparing to share …and this set the tank free to come after me.
I was waiting for others to be ready, yet I doubted they ever would be. I hadn’t seen much change in the past fifteen years; what was going to be different in the future? The tank part of me didn’t feel I should continue to bear with that. Why should I continue to hold back when doing so allowed people to continue struggling with weaknesses similar to those that could have hurt me so badly? Was I doing them any good, or was I failing to do what I could to help them find wisdom?
Yet I continued to hold back …and that kept me in the tank’s sights. It gained ground during the summer of 2019 as I considered the subject of broken spirits (being army-tank-like is sort of the opposite of having a broken spirit). I felt that one of the reasons I remained quiet was because those with broken spirits became uncomfortable when I tried to open my heart.
Holding back for their sake frustrated my driving emotions (the tank), and they made one attempt after another to find some way to break through my defenses. The stress was causing my <page 47>heart to fragment. I stayed gentle on the outside, but I knew that if I was only dealing with myself, I wouldn’t really worry about gentleness. I would speak the truth and tell myself to deal with it. If the truth made me feel condemned, I would stand on the fact that the blood of Jesus had made me right with God. If my emotions were pushed past their comfort zone, I would press into Jesus to help me come to grips with them. Truth was too important to miss an opportunity to experience it.
Guilt, fear, and anger were reaching for my heart. In Borderline Personality Disorder terms, my emotions were dysregulating and fragmenting. In dream terms, the Iranian army tank was chasing me. Would it run me into the ground?
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