“My whole life history, every event, person, place, time and thing – has a song attached to it.  Song is my native language.”

~Jeanie Rhoades, true story

So this was my just-before-waking dream this morning in the wee hours:

I was in a car on a bright, blue-sky day with a little girl.  She had a dark complexion with deep set, beautiful brown eyes and a chubby face framed with raven-black hair.  I think she was about 11 and I was fervently trying to get her to make an important decision, as important as life itself, as we drove in circles around some European town square (I guess Europe because the steering wheel was on the right).

I was saying to her: You have to decide the words in your hard-back book.  You have to see them and figure out what is there then you will know everything you need to for the rest of your life, but as long as you can’t see them, you’ll ever know.  What words are there?  What do they say and how are they written?  They are already there – look!

She would falter and seemed nervous, afraid to make a wrong move.  But I urged her on:  It is like a novel and this is your story, your novel.  What is in there?  What do you see in your book?  You have to find this out so you’ll know just what to do.

She was unsure.  She hem-hawed.  Then I remember feeling a pang of guilt, thinking to myself,  I never even found out what was in my book.  I never found out what my words were.  I don’t know my own answers…Still I knew that the story was already there, waiting to be discovered.

Yet, still, perhaps even driven by the fact that I didn’t know my own words, didn’t know the eternal story or what the type and font looked like in my own book, I all the more encouraged her to look, really look, really find out…

Suddenly she burst into tears of great relief said, “It’s songs – my words are in songs.  That is what is in my hard-cover book!”

In my dream, I hugged her little neck and by now we were on a soft carnival ride going in circles in that same town square, sort of flying gently through the air.  And in the dream, the second she said it, I realized that those were the words in my book, too – as if when she said it everything in my heart and soul suddenly bore witness, and had understanding.  When she said “the words in my hard-cover book are songs” I started crying, I burst into tears.

Me too, I excitedly realized, that is what my book is, too.  It is song.  My hard-bound book is written in melody!  Me, too!!

I was crying so hard in my dream, I woke up with tears in my eyes.  It was joyful, an amazing realization.

Dreams are so funny.

It was so vivid and intense.  Yet so full of holes, reality wobbly.  Then when you write it, it is like what??  It is making me laugh to re-read this.  But it also is making me think of book titles I could write

• My Life is an Old, Red Hymnal {I grew up C of G where the red hymnal not only ruled, it caused plenty of feuding, haha.  But its’ pages paper the walls of my memory.}.
• Whatever it Takes {the Lanny Wolfe song I sang a lot at age 14 – words so strongly indicative of my gritted-teeth determination to prove I could be what God wanted.  A million times since, I have proven that I could not do whatever it ook and that it has all been by His faithfulness}
• My Desire {from my 1975-1977 singing, “It’s My Desire” – another loud, intense anthem declaring my life intent to follow and wholly live for Jesus}

Maybe I will write all these stories someday…in hardback editions.

SONG FOR A SUNDAY

My little sister sent this to me again recently.  It was good to hear again.