Frustrating Dreams

I want to say thank you! to all of you that have contributed thus far to our Fireside Fundraiser. I have been so touched at all of your willingness to contribute yet something more to our family efforts. I have been sweetly surprised/relieved by all of you being so generous. I thought I wouldn't be able to sell any tickets, and had thought that just so I could contribute somehow I would end up buying several plates myself and of course would then not know what to do with all of that extra food. I know the food will be so so yummy and that even more of you will get to have some when we do it again next month. If you're still interested for getting food for this Friday, just email me and I'll let you know if it's still possible.

As I referred to in one of my recent posts, I haven't been feeling so well. Actually, my sinuses and cough have pretty much cleared all up, which is a relief. But I'm not talking about that, but instead mean how I've been feeling emotionally. I find myself sometimes feeling such astonishment still, that my Naki isn't going to walk around the corner and into the room. I just expect to see him, and find myself repeatedly let down when I do not. I pray every day, for me and the kids, to feel him in our lives. I don't know what that would actually feel like...to feel him in my life these days. I'm so terribly confused because at times I feel he's so close that it's possible he just might walk around the corner, as if he'd never left. And then when he doesn't, I wonder how I could have let that thought slip by my thought filter.

Somedays I am very successful at pushing the desire to see him to the back of my mind. Those are the days that I am able to not think of me living the rest of my entire mortal life without him, but rather I am able to just limit my perspective to the current day and the current day only. But I've discovered that I am only able to do that for so long, and that it is only a matter of time until all of those thoughts I've been able to suppress come boiling over the surface. How can I find the balance? How can I find the exact frame of mind that will help me live in the most complete state of wholeness that is possible? Right now the see-saw effect of this thought pattern is making me so exhausted. I am having trouble again making myself wake up in the morning. I crave sleep. More accurately, I crave the oblivion that I hope comes with sleep.

I have had some crazy dreams lately. One night I dreamed that it was the night that Naki had died. I saw up in the sky, as he was dying, what looked like a rectangular shaped portal of light. The shape kind of reminded me of one of those huge framed living room mirrors that some people have. In the inside of the frame there was nonstop activity with fragments of light...kind of like you see when Luke travels through Light Speed in Star Wars. I watched how the different stages of the light's patterns matched the different stages of Naki dying, and knew that it was time for him to go just by what the lights were doing. In my dream, time passed. I saw myself trying so hard to do everything that was required of me, all the while checking on that portal and it's level of activity. I knew that if I kept checking on it, that I'd be sure to not miss when it was my turn to go through the portal and be with Naki. Suddenly, one day, I was shocked to find that the portal having just recently been dormant, was now starting to rev up. The light show going on inside of it was beautiful, and I was pretty much hyperventilating in excitement as I could feel my body start lifting off of the ground, gradually making my way towards that opening. The joy that I felt at the thought that I was finally finished with mortality was so overwhelming that I cannot even begin to describe it. At the same time that I recognized how thrilled I was at the prospect of finally being able to see Naki, I corrected myself and reminded myself that I should be just as excited if not more that I would finally be able to see God and Jesus Christ, too. All of a sudden, just as I was almost to the portal, I felt an overwhelmingly powerful pull back to earth. As my arms were outreached heavenward, I glanced behind me and saw all six of my beautiful girls, standing as a group, with all of their arms outstretched to me, as they were crying out for me to stay. I knew instantly that I would stay with them and that it was the right thing to do. But the pain of making the choice to put my arms down back by my side and return back to the ground was intense and frustrating. The mental tug of war that I play through in my head is making me so tired.

I have felt the pull to start the process of going back to school...NOT something I'm all that thrilled about, for sure. I had been doing a little bit of research before I went to bed, and so the thoughts about what kind of job will provide the right kind of flexible hours that I need must have been at the front of my mind. In my dream, or should I call it a nightmare, I dreamt that once again, I was forced to leave my babies in someone else's care, as I went off to either go to school or go to work...I'm not sure which one. When I returned to get the girls much to my dismay no one could find Ane. For some reason the caretaker's location was near a body of water. I eventually located Ane, who in the dream was the same age she is now, playing at the edge of a deep and dangerous body of water, all alone, about to be overtaken by the powerful water. I awoke with such frustration at the circumstances that I feel somewhat pushed into, and more than a bit antsy about not being the one to take care of my babies all the time.

One book I've been reading off and on over the last couple of months is called Life Everlasting written by Duane S. Crowther. In his words in the introduction as to the purpose of this book, he writes, "This volume is not a fanciful collection of consoling poetry and funeral phraseology. It is a careful analysis of the experiences of dozens of reliable individuals who have died and then returned to life, and of scores of others who have been visited by departed spirits. It is a gathering together of revelation after revelation telling of the glorious life which awaits the righteous. It is my personal witness that life continues beyond the grave, and that God allows mortal man to know many of the joys of the life to come!" Also, written on the page before the dedication page is a quote by Joseph Smith. He said, "All men know that they must die. And it is important that we should understand....our departure hence...It is but reasonable to suppose that God would reveal something in reference to the matter, and it is a subject we ought to study more than any other. We ought to study it day and night, for the world is ignorant in reference to their true condition and relation. If we have any claim on our Heavenly Father for anything, it is for knowledge on this important subject."

I have taken that last quote to heart, and have been studying and reading intensely whenever I have a spare moment so I can learn and understand more of our Heavenly Father's divine plan for all of us, and specifically, for me. Last night I read something that Parley P. Pratt, an early member of the church, had to say on the subject of why righteous spirits return to earth. He was writing about the interest that those Spirits who have died, or what we refer to in the LDS church as those Spirits who are on the other side of the veil that separates earth and heaven, hold in their mortal loved ones. He was writing about the manner in which such beings often communicate with mortals through dreams. He explained it as follows:

"When the outward organs of thought and perception are released from their activity, the nerves unstrung, and the whole of mortal humanity lies hushed in quiet slumbers, in order to renew its strength and vigor, it is then that the spiritual organs are at liberty, in a certain degree, to assume their wonted functions, to recall some faint outlines, some confused and half-defined recollections, of that heavenly world, and those endearing scenes of their former estate, from which they have descended in order to obtain and mature a tabernacle of flesh. Their kindred spirits, their guardian angels then hover about them with the fondest affection, the most anxious solicitude. Spirit communes with spirit, thought meets thought, soul blends with soul in all the raptures of mutual, pure, and eternal love.

In this situation, we frequently hold communication with our departed father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter; or with the former husband or wife of our bosom, whose affection for us, being rooted and grounded in the eternal elements, or issuing from under the sanctuary of love's eternal fountain, can never be lessened or diminished by death, distance of space, or length of years.

We may, perhaps, have a friend of the other sex, whose pulse beat in unison with our own; whose every thought was big with the aspirations, the hopes of a bright future in union with our own; whose happiness in time or in eternity, would never be fully consummated without that union. Such a one, snatched from time in the very bloom of youth, lives in the other sphere, with the same bright hope, watching our every footstep, in our meanderings through the rugged path of life, with longing desires for our eternal happiness, and eager for our safe arrival in the same sphere.

With what tenderness of love, with what solicitude of affection will they watch over our slumbers, hang about our pillow, and seek to communicate with our spirits, to warn us of dangers or temptation, to comfort and soothe our sorrow, or to ward off the ills which might befall us, or perchance to give us some kind token of remembrance or undying love."

I've thought a great deal about his words since I read them last night. I am well aware that you cannot believe everything you read, but you can take truth from everything you read. If, in fact, there is truth in his words, how does that reconcile itself with the fact that my dreams are not peaceful moments that are conducive to such communication that I pray for daily, but rather are conflicted and anxious moments where my conscious and subconscious thoughts are played out on a nightly basis?