Lord, How?

Another morning of my common pattern, of waking before 3 am and my head swims with thoughts that will not let go back to sleep. My thoughts bounce from my own little world, to people I know and love, to the big world out there. Where is the peace of my former days? Will it ever return? My faith bids to trust in God.

I think of a dream I had a couple years ago, during a similar stressful time, that has stuck with in the canon of dreams that I remember. I was navigating out in the open ocean far away from land. It was scary. Somehow I landed on dry land, specifically Lord Howe Island, which is a real place in the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand (see here). The pun of the name was apparent to me even in my dream.  I was surprised to find on the island a thriving community, including a post office.

But my voyage was not done. It was only part of the way through. I would have to make it all the way to North America, and somehow this mean traveling around the tail of South America, in the most ferocious and dangerous waters on earth.  Moreover I would need to perform this voyage in a large cardboard box, like the kind that appliances come in, and that we would play in as children, turning them into our "houses" and decorating them with baseball cards and other items, until a heavy rain turned them soggy. 

In my dream I imagined, or was transported to being in the box amidst huge rolling waves of the Southern Ocean, with the box getting soggy. 

I think about this dream quite frequently, almost every morning lately.

At 4:30 I finally rise to make coffee and stand by the kitchen sink as the kettle boils. By the now the almost-full Moon is in the top slat of the blinds. I expected a cloudy sky but it is clear and the night was cold.

As the water boils I stare at the pattern of moonlight and shadows cast by the blinds on the counter, and the rounded edge of the stainless steel sink, and the bottom of the sink. The stark contrast between darkness and light looks like an abstract painting of a dreamscape. The rectangular bands of light are truncated as trapezoids and are pleasing to my imagination as I look at them.