my vision

Be careful what you ask for in prayer...

Last night, I got into a serious pose with God. That's happened only a couple of times before in my life, but when it has, something has happened to change me. Last night, before I went to sleep, I got into that serious discussion with God and told Him that I really needed Him to help. Oftentimes my prayers are generic requests for blessings on others, or for forgiveness of my sins, but every so often, they are serious heart-to-heart requests for help. Like last night.

At 2:30, I woke up. That's not really all that common for me, and I was just laying there. Suddenly, I had a startling vision, unbidden, and out of nowhere. It had dream-like qualities, where I was both in and observing the same object, but I was awake.

It was dark. There was this very large plain of dead grass, stretching out as far as the eye could see. It was cold, but I could not feel the cold. There were stars in the sky. No moon. No wind. No sound. Total stillness.

There was a statue on the plain. It was life-sized, and it was of a man standing. He was looking down and to the right, as though he were looking at the ground, and not just at it, but through it. Getting close to the statue, I realized it was me. But there was no color in the statue. It was black, like it was opaque, cold glass, and it was reflecting the points of starlight. I looked down at where the statue was looking, and I saw what it was seeing. I realized I was on a vast landfill, but more than a landfill, a grave site. As I was able to see underneath the grass, I saw images I did not at first understand, but quickly realized that they were the remains of my life so far. I saw all the dreams of others I had destroyed. I saw memories of my first marriage, frozen in time, shimmering as though underwater. And they had lost their color, and were like corpses, cold, lifeless, frozen in decay. I kept looking, and the more I looked, the more I saw. I saw memories of old relationships, I saw the self esteem of women whose love I had been gifted with protecting, and which I had destroyed by being critical or self-righteous. I saw their dreams, their desires, all frozen in my landfill. I even saw the hurts I had inflicted on my second wife. Even though my conscious mind tries hard to justify my behavior in the marriage, I saw all the things that mind never let me see happening to her at the time they were happening. Images of all the past hurt I was responsible for were everywhere I looked. Once I realized the contents of the landfill, and its vastness, I felt like I would quickly be overcome, and so I looked up at the statue again. He was frozen in position, staring at the ground while the images kept shifting under his gaze. And then I was inside the statue, looking down, seeing the images, unable to look away. I felt the cold, and it was beyond cold. It was a total absence of heat, but I could not feel anything like the cold of life. I realized I knew it was cold, but somehow, in the statue, I was beyond the ability to feel it as cold. It was sterile, lonely, emptiness. And still the images kept coming before the eyes of the statue. I, the vision I, was horrified by the honesty of it, but I realized that I, the statue I, was beyond horror, was even beyond regret. No tears, no sadness, no ability to feel anything at all. It was just what it was, and there was no changing it, ever. Cold replays of deaths I had caused, deaths of dreams, deaths of hope, deaths of esteem. And the landfill was so huge, I knew I would never get to the end of it all, but I couldn't turn my gaze away. It was just me, alone, the statue, in the middle of the vast plain, with only my dead to see.

At that point, the vision ended, and I heard a voice in my heart say, you have a choice. And then I saw a different path. I saw a path where I ended, and where those I could help began. The flowing, color filled lives of others without me in them, but lives that I had the opportunity to touch. And it was like a park, with laughter and sound, and somewhere, off in the distance, I saw something that looked like me, but was moving, constantly moving. Green, growing, and moving, touching people's lives, smiling with joy, and moving on.

I started this mitzvot praying for a change in myself. Knowing I needed it. Hoping that reflections on God's word would change me and get me to a place I respect in others, that ability to give and love freely. If some vision like this comes, and pertains to a change in me, even if it has no scriptural reference for the NT or OT reading of the day, then I have to write about it in the broader context of what the mizvot is all about. Regardless of the spectrum of deconstructionism vs legalism in biblical interpretation, the fact is that God IS. I believe. That is my faith. If faith begets a change, then the mitzvot is working. Prayer, serious heart to heart prayer, works.

I was shown last night how people have been forced to defend themselves from me, and no matter how badly that hurts to know, I have to take that as part of the journey toward healing. If this seems like a self-absorbed post, maybe my reflections on how prayer works will be helpful to someone else in the future. What else is all this for, if not that?