A Bit about Dreams, and a Request for Prayer

I wish it were safe to really bare my soul on this blog, but that's impossible. Blogspot just doesn't cut it for the deep stuff, you know?

But is it ok for me to admit that I'm having a hard time right now? I think I need prayer. Since November of 2008, I've been having horrible dreams several nights every week. Last night was the worst yet. There is no worse feeling than waking up in a cold sweat because you've just watched someone you love die a horrible death over and over, or you've stepped back in time and then awoken to find it was all a dream. Sometimes I dream about my family, but mostly I dream about this friend I used to have. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up shivering and crying with my hair matted to my sweaty head, and with horror in my heart. Last night this happened five times.

I used to cry for hours and beg God to take away my dreams. I would stumble through my days and then stay up until three or four in the morning so that I could have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before doing it all over again the next day.

Then I started praying for the person I was dreaming about. I prayed for no other reason than to get my mind off of the negative feelings I always had when I woke up, and I thought maybe the dreams would start to go away. They didn't.

Then I started to wonder if God might think I was simply the right one to pray for this person. Maybe I was the one who knew him well enough to pray as specifically as he needed. But hasn't it been long enough? And is it ok to admit to God that I just don't want to have to pray for that person anymore? Is that utterly selfish of me? Is it alright to wish it would all just go away, or that that person would just fall off the earth, or that he had never existed in the first place so that I could actually go to bed without being terrified of what I'll see the second I close my eyes? Really, God?? I'm willing to pray if he needs it, but why does it have to be me? I'm tired to my core.

Or maybe I've been going through an attack from Satan for the last year and nearly two months. Maybe I'm being tested to see how I'll react, or to see what I'm made of. But God knows that I desperately want Him and His will more than anything or anyone else in life. If I'm being attacked, then God will help me fight, right? I want to have only Christ-like reactions to people and situations, but the feelings that strive within me just bring me to my knees some days.

This whole experience has gone beyond shallow emotions or pain, frustration or anxiety, and has turned into what feels like a desperate fight between the spiritual forces in the world, with me caught in between. And when I wake up in a panic in the dead of night, I always feel like I've lost the fight. I'm so tired of being exhausted.

Last night I dreamt about a hallway, and a suitcase, and a photograph. In the photo was a beautiful family - a man, a woman, and two golden-haired daughters. I knew without looking that the man was my old friend. The woman's face was blurry, but those two girls...oh, I can picture their chubby cheeks and curly hair and bright blue eyes even now so many hours later. Such beautiful little girls. And all I can do is pray with longing, "Father, help them be a successful, happy family. Help those two little girls to learn who You really are, and help all four of them to overflow with love for each other and for You."

It's so strange, but waking up from my dream about a hallway, a suitcase, and a photograph, I was absolutely convinced that I was in neither a bad dream nor the past, but that I was actually seeing the future. And who knows if that's true or not. I just desperately wish I could survive without sleeping tonight or ever again.

I'm so sorry if you don't think that blogspot is the place for a post like this. I just need to share it with someone. If you're reading, and if you care, would you mind sending up a prayer for me? It's easy for me to pray for people. It's quite hard for me to ask for prayer myself, you know? But I need it right now, I think, probably quite a lot.

Thanks for reading,
That girl in Switzerland