Don’t feed the elephant in the pond.

There’s an expression about an elephant in the room and most people understand its meaning.  The elephant is that thing that is constantly on everyone’s mind, but no one wants to mention it. Well, I had an elephant in the pond. There’s an elephant in the room of my life and I can’t seem to get around it. It keeps rushing me. Jesus is bigger than the elephant, and He will use whatever means He needs to use to send me a message above and around the elephant. The elephant is still there, but I can hear Jesus voice of reassurance when I stop looking at the elephant, but just listen for GOD’s voice.

Nightmares,. I’m plagued with them. If I go to sleep and silence befalls the room, guaranteed, I will have a nightmare. It happens all the time. This is why I put my sermon playlist on when I’m going to sleep, if Jesus is being preached or Christian music is playing, I am under GOD’s protection and the enemy cannot torment me in my sleep.  Sometimes, however, the nightmares are from GOD. Well, I had an elephant in a pond.

I had one the other day and I woke up with my heart racing.  You know those dreams when you’re screaming but no sound is coming out, but you are screaming with every bit of emotional energy you have.  I dreamt that I went somewhere with my ex and a few of my other children, but I left one of my children home, she’s twelve. I didn’t mean to be gone all day, but it turned out that way.  I felt guilty and when we pulled up in the street (of our old home, by the way)  a bad feeling came over me.  Melanie’s friend was standing on the sidewalk with a look of terror on her face.  She was shaking and terrified.  I asked her,

“Where’s Melanie!  Her voice kept breaking as she tried to tell me what happened. I kept yelling at her, “Where’s Melanie!” 

Then in tears she said. “She went in the water she was just  exploring. She went in the water.”  She looked up into my eyes and I knew what was coming next. “She didn’t come up.”

I froze, I thought, “Oh GOD! This can’t be happening to me.”  I started running toward the pond with a trail of people behind me, screaming for help, telling someone to call 911. 

I reached this tiny pond, no bigger than my front yard. I knew it was deep, and I couldn’t decide whether or not to jump in and search for her. I was so afraid of finding her dead body. I was terrified. If I jumped in and saw her dead then there’d be no hope, it would be over. As I debated, I saw some sand rising to the top as if it were bubbles.  I thought, “Maybe she’s alive, deep down there and digging her way out…," I froze and I screamed, but I couldn’t decide what to do. I kept seeing the dirt rising, and that gave me hope.  I continued to scream in anguish, then I awoke.

It took me a couple of minutes to get my bearings. Of course, I immediately turned on a sermon and started listening.  A day later, that dream came back to me. My dreams usually do not unless there’s a message from GOD in it.  This one came back and I heard, “Pay attention, Kristina, think.”   I saw the dirt rise to the water’s surface. Then I thought, “maybe she was digging under the pond to get to the other side where there was no water. She must have gotten resourceful and found a pocket of air under the bottom of the pond and she’s digging. “  Then I heard.  “As long as there’s dirt coming up to the surface there’s hope.”  The pieces of the dream kept coming back to me and I understood the correlations.

The murky pond represented my heart drowning in sea of despair, but the pond was so small. In other words, smaller in reality than I am making it.  I was on my old street of the house we lived in eighteen years ago.  Melanie wasn’t even born then.  I knew right away what GOD was trying to show me. “That’s your old life.”

“Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19

I asked GOD, “Of all eight children, why Melanie,”  I took a stab in the dark. I looked up and said to GOD,  “She’s the only one.”  That matter is too personal for a public blog. To put it simple, she’s the only one who touched the elephant.  I truly believe that GOD did indeed send that nightmare. God will use any means He has to either get our attention either to convict us, to strengthen us, or to encourage us and tell us, again for the 16,733 time, “Don’t worry, child. You can keep hoping, there’s hope.”

“And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maid servants, I will pour My Spirit in those days. Joel 2:28-29

I guess it’s time to face facts, I’m the “old” category, but there’s hope. In all of this, there has been one promise that GOD gave me at the very beginning of this arduous journey and that was in Joel.

“I will repay the years the locusts have eaten.” 

Let me tell you, I have some pretty fat locusts in my yard, house, and everywhere I look.  So, as long as the dirt is rising to the top of the dark murky pond of despair, there’s hope!