Dreams and Regrets

 I’m a dreamer. Not the type that sits and has crazy visions and pictures of a new tomorrow. No. I literally dream pretty much every night and remember my dreams. The other day while not feeling great, I took a nap on the couch and dreamt then. I have a sister who tells me she never remembers dreaming. There are some dreams I would like to not remember, and some I would like to dream again. Like the one where I am sitting having a conversation with one of my parents, knowing that they are no longer alive. Those were pretty cool. And the one I had last night, where my children were small.  

The details of the dream are sketchy at this point, but I do remember several things. One is my daughter being about four or five, and talking to me. She had a very distinct voice at that age and I heard it clearly. The other is that there were several adult family members with me, and we were actually time-traveling and that is why we were with my pre-school aged kids. (Yeah. Sounds really weird, until I remembered this morning that my granddaughter and I were talking about book topics yesterday and the subject of time travel came up.) I mentioned in my dream to one of the adults that if we could determine exactly where and when we were traveling to, could we correct some things we did wrong? Would we want to? Clearly, even in REM sleep, I do some deep thinking.

In this conversation with Madison, my granddaughter, we also discussed where the inspiration for book ideas comes from. We laughed at where some of them originated. Our own lives, other books, movies, our imaginations, what have you. Even a song lyric can get you to thinking. One of my favorite songs, (hang around, you will hear that a lot) starts with ‘Dear Younger Me’. Where do I start? If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far then you could be one step ahead….But at the same time the song goes on to say how even though some of the choices were tough, the choices made him who he is today. It’s a great song and I wonder, what would we tell our younger selves? 

I thought along these lines as I, then later my husband John, worked on a problem yesterday. Said granddaughter was given some hanging wall lights, like a curtain, for Christmas. Sadly, without understanding the process of opening and hanging them properly, they became tangled. Eventually they were stuffed back into the box. We wanted to try to sort them out so that they could be hung on the wall around her bed, so begin the laborious process of trying to untangle the mess. I worked on them for about two hours, then John took over and literally sat working on them for probably four hours or more. I’m not sure, because I eventually went to bed. This morning when I got up, they are on the floor, still not completely untangled. Progress was made, but there is a knot that we just can’t get through. 

I see a parallel between that and what happens when we try to take over managing our lives. God put us together, He designed us, and He knows the plan for the finished product. And yet we, feeling fairly confident in our abilities to figure things out do not even consult Him as to what we are doing, how to do it, or what the plan is. And so many times, we end up on the floor with a tangled mess and no earthly idea of how to fix it. How convenient it would be to be able to jump back in time and do it over. How many times has something happened and our immediate thought is, ‘Man, I’d like to go back five minutes and re-do that?’  Life doesn’t work that way, though. Some of those regrets are small, like tangled curtain lights, others can be life-altering, like career choices, marriages or financial commitments.  

I doubt anyone can live a life completely void of regrets. I personally believe that our goal should be to have as few as possible by letting the Spirit of God guide us through our decision making. Live as if today could be our last day, and treat people as if this may be the last conversation we have with them. And when we do make mistakes, do wrong, learn from it. For as Matthew West says:

Every mountain every valley
Thru each heartache you will see
Every moment brings you closer
To who you were meant to be