I don’t know if anybody else is experiencing this, but to me it’s like the whole world is holding it’s breath. It is almost eerie. For many weeks, I have been still, praying for insight, guidance, and direction. At times, I have felt despairing over the state of this world.

I have recurring dreams of being in unfamiliar settings, always trying to get home. I have been having this same dream for years now.  Although the setting changes, I am always somewhere that I don’t belong, and trying to get back to where I am supposed to be. Often, I am apparently not visible to others. If others in the dream do see me, they pay me no mind, and I rarely have any direct interaction with anyone in these dreams. Sometimes I’m in dangerous areas and intentionally avoiding being seen.

Another recurring dream I have often, and sometimes combined with the lost/wandering dream, is one where I have a big wad of chewing gum in my mouth that I want to spit out. But even as I pull a gob of it out, there is always more replacing it, as if it just keeps expanding, and meanwhile I keep having to figure out how to dispose of the sticky stuff already in my hand. Often trying to avoid anyone seeing.  I have always thought this was a very weird dream, but come to find out, it is a common one!

I don’t think there is anything mystical about dreams like these, but I do think they are visual manifestations of frustrations and feelings I have.

Like the rest of the remnant, I want with every fiber of my being, to escape the bondage of flesh and this cursed world and be restored to a state that was God’s original intent. I am more acutely aware with each passing year, of being an alien on enemy territory, yearning for the safety and comfort of home.

I believe the gum dream may have to do with the frustration of not feeling heard, or never being able to fully express things, but also difficulty processing  and coming to terms with some things, feeling stuck in a cycle that I never quite manage to escape. Striving in my walk, wanting to grow yet feeling I fail to do so. Wanting to understand those I care for and be understood, but that, too, seems elusive. Always surrounded by the world and it’s standards, priorities and definitions, but having very different ones as an adopted child of God. In this world but not of it.

Other than those 2 dreams, I rarely remember having dreamed at all, most nights.

For a lot of years on end, life has been such that I have just kept my head down and pressed on. Things have happened that I didn’t have energy nor opportunity to process in realtime. My Mom’s passing, for whatever reason, was a breaking point or catalyst at which my spirit drew a line and seemed to go on a sit-down strike, with no desire or intention of budging until some of what I had swallowed and pressed down inside, could finally be digested.

For me, that requires talking and writing.

I’ve had a compulsion in the last few years, to offload some extraneous “stuff” around the house. I have a lot of notebooks. My journals serve for prayer, “talk therapy”, and notes from my studies of scripture. About 15 years ago was the last time I weeded through them and shredded portions written when going through particularly emotional times, so the ones I was reviewing and weeding recently, were from the most recent 15 or so years. That period encompasses my husband’s cancer, my health and wellness struggles, menopause, loss of both parents, (one was sudden, the other a drawn out painful process) empty nest, becoming a grandma, our quest for a solid church, and the multitude of ways America and society at large has declined during that span of years. It’s a time of laying some things to rest, and maybe also a time for the Lord to prepare me for new chapters.

I sometimes wish I were not so analytical. My need to understand people and relationships and so many things, is part of God’s “design of me”, and surely He has His purpose in it, but it is not always pleasant. In asking Him “what is your will for this season of my life, and what is my purpose?” He has yet to reveal the answer, and maybe He is leaving it open for me to decide.

For the longest time, I hoped to regain a level of stamina better than what I currently have. I was getting there prior to my Mom’s decline, and that took so much out of me and interrupted and cancelled out what felt like my last shot. If “you’re only as old as you feel”, I’m about 74, while I chronologically won’t be 60 until August. Bloodwork is all good. All the recommended screenings for my age are done and normal.

I’m just a fish out of water. Like so many of you, waking up “still here” each morning, I groan in my spirit.

I can remember when my Dad was still here. He paid attention and knew the season. He waited eagerly. He acknowledged that at his age, he didn’t have long to wait “either way”. If the rapture was still a ways off (which it clearly was, he’s been gone over a decade), he knew his graduation date couldn’t be too far off.  I think after Mom passed, I became acutely aware that places put me “officially” on deck for those waning golden years. So I’ve had grieving to do, of things hoped for that now will never be, of goodbyes to an era of extended family gone, and reasons to visit those mountains that were so special all my life. I can go back, sure, but it will never be the same.

Recently we have contemplated moving. Don’t know if it will happen. God knows, though. Waiting is hard. But probably not as hard as going forth in our own “wisdom”. I’ve always said, you can only steer a ship that is moving. Maybe I am finally getting a little bit of patience. It is a new season, and unlike the other seasons, I don’t have any particular notions or expectations, going in. I’m just trying to keep from only anticipating the seeming inevitability of many hard things that often accompany the “final years”. I haven’t lost sight of the blessed hope. I just haven’t been able to sustain the same immediacy of that expectation as I did for so long. We’ve already seen more than we expected.

The talk of persecution and the thought of it, is hard to bear. Some people say they would be honored to suffer for the Lord. God bless you if that’s where you are and you mean it with eyes wide open. As for me, I have read Foxx’s Book of Martyrs. I have read quite a lot on the holacaust. I definitely cannot express any sincere willingness to endure such things. I do know that only a supernatural dispensation of grace given in the midst of such a trial, makes it bearable. It is not something that can be mustered from within me or prepared for ahead of time, so I see no reason to dwell on it.

The prevailing notion I have at this moment is, whatever is in the works, please can we just get on with it! Being suspended here between an impending hell-on-earth and our escape to eternity in heaven feels a littke like torture. Maybe my perspective isn’t right, but that’s where I am today.  I do realize this day could soon be a time I would wish to go back to, so I ultimately just pray for God’s perfect timing and help to endure.

I think the eclipse is a warning, obviously specific to America, 7 months ahead of “election day” but I no longer feel the need to keep up with every development, or wonder if this or that is a sign. It’s clear this holding pattern simply can’t last much longer, and thus that collective holding of the breath. It’s like watching a semi truck teeter off a bridge by one set of wheels. Not a matter of if, just how long, and how bad it’ll be. OCT 7 was a catalyst. It released something. I think that whatever the next big thing is,  it will be like a global tsunami or implosion in that some significant things will be obliterated. If we think we can hardly recognize our world today, I think most if not all normalcy bias that still remains, will soon be stripped away. A day will come when the sifting of wheat from chaff is finished.

Luke 21

³⁴And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. ³⁵For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man