Calm the Storms That Drench My Eyes

Last night while watching an episode of What About Brian (my new Hulu indulegence now that I have seen every episode of Greek and The Secret Life of the American Teenager,) I saw a public service announcement from the EPA featuring babies in green socks crawling around a house. The "go green" message (though not the babies) crept into my dream, which was sort of November 22nd T-rexish in nature.

When the dream opened I was standing in a crowd beside two tall buildings. People had been warned against doing something (eco-UNfriendly, I assume) to the foundation of the buildings, but for whatever reason the warning had been ignored. As we stood there the ground began to shake, and I knew the buildings were about to explode, which would then cause a natural disaster. I ran to my car, turned the key in the ignition, and listened to the radio as I tried to back out into the mass exodus of cars. Someone on the radio said, "One out of every three people trying to escape by car will die." Shoot.

I drove until I reached a familiar building, at which point I parked my car and went inside. The hallways were empty and the lighting looked dark blue--reminiscent of Titanic when the ship is sinking and Rose runs back below deck to rescue Jack. Silent except for the sound of impending doom outside. I walked up the inclined hallway and saw two people through a half-open door at the end of the hall. I opened the door and saw that it was William--our media specialist at church--and... his mom? They said the building would only be safe for a few more minutes, and even as we spoke I turned around and saw water rising in the hall. I don't know if prior to this I knew what kind of natural disaster was going to take place, but at this point I knew it was a flood. Interesting though, it never rained in the dream; water was just rising from the ground where the two tall buildings had been.

I ran out of the building, trying to find higher ground, and realized I was standing at a fork in the dirt road. I looked down the right path and saw water rising; left still appeared dry, so I ran. Up ahead I saw a few kids from the youth group, all aware that something serious was happening, but lacking the appropriate urgency. I took one 6th grade girl (Emily) by the hand, and we all ran. I thought, "We are all going to be so close when this is over!" We saw people sitting in boats, waiting, and knew we needed to find a boat.

At some point the group evolved into me, Emily, Ross, Donnie, and Selina, our contemporary worship leader. We decided to go to the bay, figuring there would be plenty of boats. I have no idea how far away the bay was or how we got there, but all of a sudden we were there standing on a dock. It was almost night, and we knew the water was continuing to rise (apparently not at the bay) and destroy things. We waited in a boat house until finally we received word that the flood had ended! Although we were taling about a flood, the news came more with the attitude of, "The war has ended." We jumped and cheered and hugged each other.

The next morning--though we never slept... the scene just skipped ahead-- there was a celebration gathering of all the boats. We (six of us at this point) paddled into a crowd of hundreds of boats wearing white ninja masks and cheering for our ninja team. (Last night during youth praise team practice I walked out of the balcony, singing to myself, and as I turned the corner to go down the dark stairs, Donnie was standing right in front of me. If you've ever spent an hour with me you know that I am very easily startled, so when I saw Donnie I gasped and flailed my arms, hitting my hand on the wall. Without cracking a smile Donnie said, "Sorry... I'm training to be a ninja." :) Hence Donne and the boat of ninjas... I don't know about the rest of it though.)

Is sleep less restful when you dream a lot? If so, I guess this saga of a dream explains why I often need 9-10 hours of sleep at night!