Friday, August 14, 2009

The dream

Last night I had a dream.

Rhythm was doing a service project in South East Roanoke and I had arrived a little late. As I walked up to get some instructions on what I should be doing, Thomas Frankie grabbed a box of tissues and told me to follow him, Craig had something he needed me to do. He took off running around a few dilapidated buildings until we were standing in a parking lot sized pile of mud. Craig was there, looking down at something buried in the mud. As I walked closer, I realized that he was talking to someone who was buried in the mud from head to toe and as I drew closer, I realized that it was a woman with only her face, hands, and feet showing through the now drying mud.

Craig stood up and looked at me, pointed down to her, and said "Talk to her. She needs to talk to you." I knelt down in the mud next to her, being careful to not kneel on any part of her buried body, pressed a tissue into her hand and said, "I'm Shanna." The woman instantly began to sob and tell me her story.

She told me that she once had a good life. She was a wife, a mother, and an active woman in her community. She helped everyone who needed it without a thought about herself. But then an accident happened and all the bones in her feet were crushed and the bottom half of her legs were horribly mangled. I looked down at her feet and realized that they were crumpled, broken, and still bleeding. She said the accident happened in the very same spot she was laying and because no one helped her, she had to stay in that spot and the bleeding never stopped. The entire lower half of her body was now covered in blood and mud. She continued to talk to me, her tears making crooked paths through the mud on her face, about how all she wanted was to be clean, all she wanted was to wash the mud off.

I woke up before the conversation ended, before I saw in the dream what I did to help her, but I don't think my helping her was really the point of the dream. I'm no Joseph, but God spoke to me very clearly through this dream.

"Am I the woman?" I asked Him.

"Only if you chose to be."

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